Voice of Iran: We all need you (as their ropes are after our hopes)

Since the beginning of this blog, I have only shared testimonies of my loved ones in Iran. I do not know Danial, and if his voice still reaches us, as well as the chilling account of his arbitrary arrest and his 15 days of detention, it is thanks to the bond he has forged with Hoda, from Tehran to Paris .

Hoda Sajjadi contacted me through the Facebook account associated with this blog.

She suggested I share this testimony that she received from Iran in the form of audio messages, and which brings a little more reality to these words that we hear or read too often lately, without necessarily fully grasping their meaning: "arbitrary arrest", "disappearances", "confessions obtained under torture".

Danial is in his thirties, he works in Tehran. He was already in contact with Hoda before these events (through the association for intercultural exchange and local development assistance, PARMIDA, which she founded in 2018), and it is therefore quite naturally that he turned to her when he felt the need to share with someone outside Iran the horrors he had experienced following his "arrest" in early November.

His testimony contains, of course, his deep distress but also his hope.

I am heartbroken as I share it with you tonight, but at the same time I am happy, proud and confident, and more importantly, I am grateful to Danial and Hoda for providing us with this new proof that the future won't happen if we don't learn to bond with one another.

"Winning together, or losing separately ", we knew from the start that there was no other way.

Go tonight, I'm leaving you with Danial's courage and confidence, hoping that you will find it in yourself too, to carry the voices of the Iranian people, and to bond with them, wherever it's possible.

"It happened on the way to my job. I work in a small business. And so, it was on the street, and we were a few people walking towards a bus stop.

A group of lebâss shakhssi spotted and attacked us for no reason. They beat us. (Translator's note: this expression, which literally means "personal clothing", refers to members of a body of the armed forces acting in civilian clothes, and known for their violence)

As for me, they pushed me into a gutter, and two of my teeth were knocked out.

They kept kicking us so I just tried to shield my head with my arms.

Then they put me in the back of a weird vehicle together with the others.

They took us to an unknown place. It was like a big cave with water reaching my knees.

I was kept for 15 days in this situation - in this sort of cellar, with water up to my knees.

I could hear people screaming in pain in other rooms. They begged and they swore on all the holy Shiites but these people there (the lebâss shakhssi) paid no attention to it.

All this shouting had no effect on them whatsover.

From the next room, I heard someone crying out for death and crying out to God for help.

They took me out of the cellar to beat me and they touched me in places that I am ashamed to describe to you.

At that precise moment, I had only one desire: to die.

After 15 days of being beaten up and tortured and held in that damp cellar, I confessed everything they asked me to confess and then they released me.

I'm very afraid that they'll come back for me, but I have no doubts: we're living through the end of this dictatorship..."

(translator's note: Danial is an assumed first name)