"Iran is dominated by a prison regime"

“Iran is dominated by a prison regime”

-Are you afraid?

-Sure, I’m very afraid.

The uncooked voice of Hossein Soori, 48 years outdated, of common top, tremors in a lodge room in Alicante, town he has chosen to fulfill. He has performed so as a result of it was on this province, final November, when he took benefit of the World Youth Boxing Championships in La Nucia, to go away the nation the place he was president of the Boxing Federation. It was right here that he started his new life.

He took a suitcase and left within the lodge. He left the whole lot, his spouse and three daughters within the Asian nation, with the purpose of denouncing the atrocities of the Shi’ites regime from the surface. This step had already been taken by a number of sportsmen in recent times, however by no means by a member of the administration. He has been accused of being a traitor. He and his household obtain demise threats. On the finish of the interview he’ll take a airplane to an unknown vacation spot.

Query: Did you may have a cheerful childhood?

A: I used to be born in Balochistan [a region in the east of the country, bordering Pakistan and with a Sunni majority], which ranks first in the entire of Iran by way of poverty, backwardness, discrimination and injustice.

Q: Does being born there construct character?

A: I instantly noticed sport, and boxing particularly, as a instrument to battle for myself. I achieved nice success within the ring, I used to be regional champion after which I turned a coach. I managed to take my provincial staff from being one of many backside groups within the nation to changing into champions of Iran. There, the boxing champions and veterans steered that I change into the pinnacle of the boxing board in my metropolis, and so it occurred, and after that, the boxing staff of Balochistan was the champion of Iran for 8 consecutive years- it turned one of the crucial highly effective groups in Iran.

Q: And that led you to the presidency?

A: Properly, this helped me to change into a coach and director of Iranian boxing. Then I labored because the sports activities director of the identical province for 4 years. And in the identical interval, I used to be elected director of all provincial establishments for 2 consecutive years. In that province, there have been nice successes within the subject of sport, and this led me to hitch the boxing federation, for which I ran as a candidate. Because of the connection I established with the heads of delegations in numerous provinces of the nation, I used to be elected head of the Iran Boxing Federation.

Q: When did you make the choice to go away the nation?

A: Earlier than I used to be elected president of the Boxing Federation, I had already performed quite a lot of social work. For 4 or 5 years, we collected assist from the individuals for the discharge of prisoners who weren’t being paid any consideration. They have been paying for crimes that the regime had punished them by way of fines.

This has gone from dangerous to worse. We’ve got a rustic that’s maybe one of many worst human rights violators on the planet. They readily homicide individuals, they readily ignore the rights of ethnicities and minorities, they readily ignore something that’s thought of human rights and nicely, the barbarism and violence has reached an all-time excessive.

Q: However you labored for the administration…

A: Perhaps, to some extent, it was as a result of I wished to do a worthwhile job, to attempt to make a distinction. However after the current occasions which have occurred in Iran and the brutal killing, particularly of the individuals of Baluchistan on the Bloody Friday in Zahedan, the murdering of fellow residents, a lot of who I knew: the youngsters, younger individuals, kids, outdated individuals… I might stand it. Simply the next week, one thing related occurred in Jash, and there I felt that I could not collaborate with this regime once more and that I needed to get away. That is once I thought that the most effective plan of action was to go overseas and inform the world the reality in regards to the individuals of Iran, particularly the Baluchi (ethnic minority) individuals.

Q. Had been there any pals of yours within the 66 bloodbath?

A: About 100 individuals have been killed, the determine you say is decrease. 100 individuals in Zahedan, eighteen individuals in Jash. In whole 118 individuals. And 300 individuals have been wounded, mutilated, disabled and had their spines reduce. These have been harmless individuals. Within the final 10 days alone, and write this down, 29 of my fellow residents have been burned alive and killed by gasoline vehicles, and this has occurred within the final 10 days alone. In a single yr, 624 of my fellow countrymen have been killed in Balochistan alone.

These are issues that we could not have offical statistics for. What I’m saying is documented and in accordance with the statistics and figures which have been launched. And in the present day, the human rights neighborhood ought to know that, for my part, a genocide is being dedicated towards them. This nation is a noble nation and pressured by the crimes of the regime.

Q. What did Mahsa Amini [the young woman who was killed in September for wearing her hijab incorrectly] characterize to the Iranian individuals?

Mahsa Amini is a transparent instance of the primary slogan of the Iranian revolution: Girl, Life, Freedom. Mahsa Amini had travelled from one other metropolis to see Tehran, the capital of Iran, and the federal government continues to turns a blind eye to the distress of the individuals, the injustices, the discrimination… all due to the prison regime that guidelines there, by way of the mismanagement and misadministration there.

They tortured and killed her within the detention centre after which denied it, and killed greater than 600 individuals to show that they didn’t kill Mahsa Amini. Then they wounded 100 extra. They arrested about 50,000 individuals and despatched them to prisons, and we nonetheless do not know the destiny of a few of these prisoners.

Q: However in Zahedan, the police chief was changed after that bloodbath and the ‘morality police’ stopped working, aren’t these modifications?

A: Do not doubt that that is simply propaganda. The Islamic Republic backs down when it’s in peril. This authorities backs down every time it’s pressured. What occurred was a genocide that was straight ordered by senior Iranian officers and this has nothing to do with the police chief of Zahedan. They’ve been the victims of organised crime based mostly Zahedan’s imaginative and prescient, as a result of there guidelines the Shi’ite authorities. It is as a result of the individuals of Zahedan are Sunni and Baloch, and they’re ethnically and religiously completely different.

Q. How is the brand new era in Iran being educated? In a discriminatory perspective in the direction of girls?

A. The regime considers {that a} girl possess half the rights of a person and considers her nugatory. These girls won’t be able to run for the presidency of the republic. They haven’t any proper to be current in locations the place they’ll current themselves as profitable administrators. Actually, this sort of fascist imaginative and prescient can destroy society from inside, that is what hurts and harms us all.

As somebody who has three daughters, I’ll by no means settle for such a factor to occur in relation to girls, and the individuals of Iran additionally assume the identical means. However the authorities has a unique and patriarchal need, and I’m positive that such a factor, in keeping with the intelligence and understanding of Iranian youth, won’t occur. The regime won’t obtain its purpose and you’ll see that even the federal government has began to battle towards the brand new era and is poisoning college students or depriving them of training in colleges and universities, however the Iranian youth of in the present day will battle towards this tyranny.

Q. Has there been a setback in Iran’s freedoms beneath the brand new president or is that this one thing that has been happening for a very long time?

R. I want to make a degree right here in regards to the figurehead imposed on the Iranian individuals. The individuals of Iran haven’t elected him. The one who is elected because the chief is elected by the Guardian Council, as a result of if the individuals might run for the presidency freely, this particular person would by no means be elected. Ebrahim Raisi turned the president of Iran with 25% of the individuals’s votes, with nothing however homicide on his report, such because the executions of 1988 as proof of this particular person’s crime. He sentenced greater than 30,000 individuals to demise. Throughout his time within the Islamic Republic’s judicial system, he solely knew the language of executions, threats and violence. He’s an illiterate president who can barely learn or write, and he has solely come to kill, intimidate and threaten the individuals of Iran. The individuals of Iran positively don’t acknowledge him.

Now such an individual has come to be in control of the chief and administration of the nation. He took away the few freedoms that Iranians had and created an enormous jail through which 85 million Iranians have been incarcerated. One of many authorities’s trials towards its opponents is to ban them from leaving the nation. An individual like Ali Daei (former footballer) for instance, who was solely defending the individuals of Iran, is banned from leaving the nation.

Q: Are many sportsmen tortured in Iran?

A: You see, I spent a little bit over 30 years of my life in sport. In my time, it’s value saying that Iranian boxing received its first world medal, additionally by the hands of a balochi and a pupil of mine. Once I arrived, I didn’t enable the rights of the Balochi individuals to be misplaced, a minimum of in boxing, and this occurred when Daniel Shah Bakhsh received the primary world boxing medal. The federal government maintains its personal ideological view of sportsmen. In the identical metropolis of Alicante, when the Iranian youth boxing staff arrived, we have been accompanied by an Iranian intelligence safety agent, whose position was to completely management the children on the staff.

So I used to be very involved and what I heard was about how they managed the athletes, threatened that they’d not have a spot within the nationwide staff in the event that they violated the orders. For those who violate the beliefs of our authorities, you might be kicked out of the nationwide staff. As well as, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Ministry has requested me many occasions why there have been extra ethnic Iranians within the nationwide staff. They requested me to explain- the one factor that elevated was the variety of Baloch and Kurdish athletes within the nationwide staff.

Q. And in different sports activities?

A. Have a look at what is going on to us now in soccer, Nasr Azadani [sentenced to death at first and then to 26 years in prison], Ali Karimi, Ali Daei, Vuria Gafuri? You see what occurred to them. They have been the voices of the individuals. When Ali Daei’s spouse and son have been taken off the flight, when Ali Karimi was threatened with demise, when Vuria Ghafuri was pressured to say goodbye to soccer and no staff would signal him. This strain cannot be any higher.

The medal just isn’t vital to them, the triumph of an athlete just isn’t vital. What they search is to hold, publicise and expose the orders of their regime on the planet. We had sportsmen and heroes who have been executed for having supported the individuals, equivalent to Mohammad Mahdi Karami (karateka who was hung to demise), Navid Afkari (wrestler), and there have been additionally individuals who have been pressured to go away the competitors so as to not compete towards Israel, equivalent to: Saeed Moulai, Vahid Sarlak, Omid Ahmadi Safa. Or girls, equivalent to Shahreh Biya, Sara Khadem, Elnaz Rekabi, Mehr Asa Oladi, Nazfar Nikjo and Sahar Jafari are a few of those that defended the liberty of the hijab.

Q. How did individuals react to incidents such because the Iranian nationwide staff not singing the anthem towards England within the World Cup or the bravery of Sara Khadem, the chess participant?

A: Let me inform you one thing first. Individuals strongly opposed the regime’s motion due to that Spanish fan (Santiago Snchez) who had crossed 15 nations on foot and when he entered Iran, was arrested and imprisoned. I used to be very saddened {that a} nation like Iran has such a merciless regime that an individual who had made his means there on foot with love and affection was handled in such a disgraceful means.

The response of the Iranian staff to the World Cup is consultant of the entire Iranian society. On the lodge the place the gamers of the nationwide staff have been staying they have been instructed that if they didn’t sing the anthem of the Islamic Republic on the subsequent matches, their households can be arrested. However that gesture within the first match was praised by the Iranian individuals. We face a society through which greater than 85% of it’s in an enormous jail referred to as Iran, persecuted by the Islamic Republic and being tortured.

Then, the motion that Elnaz Rekabi [the climber] generated on the Asian Championships in Korea when she took off her veil was a giant “no” to the non secular tyranny that the federal government was making an attempt to impose by drive on the individuals. What occurred to her afterwards was unlucky. She had a home and it was destroyed.

What Sara Khadem did was one other very nice, admirable and provoking act for the Iranian individuals. And even Saeed Paramon, a participant of the boys’s seashore soccer staff, who stood up for Iranian girls with the enjoyment of his purpose, and now the federal government has banned him from the nationwide seashore staff.

Q: There have been presupposed to be two boxers with you after they defected, what occurred to them?

A: On the day they have been presupposed to report back to the world youth championships, they requested me to get them a bond value 1 billion tomans [Iranian currency], however I did not do this and left them free to make any resolution about their future. All of the athletes have been going to journey to Spain for these competitions and change into refugees. Others had thought of going to different nations as a result of they felt that the Islamic Republic would possibly discover them they usually have been a bit afraid, even I actually had and nonetheless have this concern that they’re searching for me with the concept of injuring me. Properly, they each managed to flee. One in every of them is in Spain and the opposite in Germany, and I want them nicely and hope that they are going to succeed within the journey forward of them and someday they are going to shine for Spain and Germany and win a medal that Iran rejected.

Q: How does your loved ones take care of your rebel?

A: I’ve nightmares each evening. I’ve nightmares as a result of the Islamic Republic has proven that it doesn’t respect any guidelines. They killed Kian Pirfalak (12-year-old boy, shot useless in his father’s automotive by the safety forces). When so many kids have been executed within the Islamic Republic it’s a very regular factor to fret about my household.

On the identical time, now we have began a motion for the victory of the Iranian individuals, as a voice of the Iranian individuals. I used to be within the nation as a senior supervisor, I might have hidden the crimes, I might have stayed with the killers and lived my very own life, however I mentioned “no”. I mentioned “no” to the world, to the murderers, to the violators of human rights, to those that kill girls and youngsters, who don’t even have mercy for animals and have destroyed the surroundings, destroyed life, haven’t any mercy for something. I mentioned “no” to them, and in the present day my “no” should attain the ears of the world, and that is the primary motive why I’m on this path.

Q. What’s your attraction now?

R. Immediately, what worries me and what I would like from the worldwide neighborhood, from the Spanish authorities, is to assist my household to get out of this hell as quickly as doable. Now they reside a secret life, they do not go to highschool, they reside in concern each day. I ask you to not reject my hand and are available to assistance from the Baloch individuals, the individuals of Iran and the oppressed individuals. Immediately, Balochistan is burning within the fireplace of the regime’s anger. Immediately, the Baloch persons are affected by the ethnic and spiritual repression of the Iranian regime, and each day we’re witnessing many deaths on this land. I hope that, together with your assist, with the assistance of the Spanish authorities, with the assistance of the individuals of this nation, I may be that voice that ought to be heard nicely for years, and I ask the Spanish authorities to offer me that chance. I hope we will come to assistance from others one after the other and change into a transparent instance of this nice household that synthesises humanity in it.

And he concludes by reciting a poem by the “nice Iranian poet” Saadi [from the 13th century]

Human beings are members of a unity

Within the creation of 1 essence and one soul,

If one limb suffers ache

Different stressed limbs will stay

If you don’t sympathise with human ache

You can’t be to maintain the title human.

We are able to say that we’re human when now we have felt the ache of different human beings and the cry of these individuals reaches us.