Dissident Spotlight: Narges Mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi decades in prison for her human rights advocacy show how intolerable compassion is in a state that treats its citizens like children made only to obey.
Narges Mohammadi is one of the most well-known human rights activists in Iran. As PEN America reports, she was first arrested in 2009 for her affiliation with the human rights organization, Defenders of Human Rights Centre (DHRC).
She was arrested in Iran shortly after publishing her book, White Torture, a book chronicling the mistreatment of Iranian prisoners, many of whom are in prison for advocating for human rights.
She was arrested in 2010, but was released on bail. In 2014, she gave a speech criticizing the conditions of Evin Prison. After the speech, she was arrested again and charged with:
Spreading propaganda against the system
Gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security
Membership of an illegal organization whose aim is to harm national security
The membership charge came from her work with an Iranian organization working to abolish the country’s death penalty.
Today, she remains in prison after another arrest in 2022, where she is forbidden from seeing doctors to treat her neurological condition.
Reporting on Cruelty is Not a Crime
Mohammadi is living proof that authoritarian systems are unable to accommodate compassionate citizens.
While authoritarians must suppress dissent in any form, ordinary citizens are the ones who risk speaking out to improve conditions for their fellow countrymen and women.
Suppressing dissent by force is an ugly business, so anyone who advocates compassion becomes a criminal. It’s one of the darkest inversions that dictators force upon their country’s moral reasoning. Dictators make the army enforce a backwards moral code that criminalizes kindness and rewards the arbitrary cruelty of the state.
It may sound trite to call for governments to reward compassion. But Iran’s crackdown on dissidents like Mohammadi, one of the stubbornest voices for kindness, shows the danger of a government permitting itself to treat people with the most depraved cruelty.