Two Iranian Christian women; Maryam and Marziyeh: “One day is like a year and they treated us like animals"

Iran (Evin prison). World Watch Monitor(November 29, 2017)

"- Following their arrest in 2009, they were transferred to a women’s cell in Evin Prison, where they were forced to sleep on the floor in a room with 30-40 other prisoners. They say there was just one small window with no view and that the temperature was sweltering in summer and freezing in winter. The lights were kept on all night, while a television incessantly blasted out state propaganda.

They say they were denied medical treatment because of their faith and that they were seen as “dirty infidels”. --- Rostampour and Amirizadeh also spent 40 days in an interrogation building, where they were asked repeatedly to deny their Christian faith, while interrogators demanded the names of the people who had attended their “house church” and asked them to sign forced confessions.

“If you don’t give us the information we need, we’ll beat you till you vomit blood,” they were told."

"Two Iranian Christian women who once faced the threat of execution for their faith have described the conditions inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, calling it “the most brutal prison in the world”."

Worldwatchmonitor: "Iranian Christian women describe ‘world’s most brutal prison’ (full text)

https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/coe/iranian-christian-women-describe-worlds-brutal-prison/

"Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, who spent eight months there in 2009/10, now live in the US, where they were granted asylum after their release. They wrote about their experiences in a book, ‘Captive in Iran’, published in 2013.

Twenty-one Christians have been sentenced to long prison terms in Iran over the past six months, and many of them are now in Evin Prison. In a new interview with the UK’s Times newspaper, the two women explain the conditions they are likely to be experiencing.

“One day is like a year,” says 35-year-old Rostampour. “Some days you can’t breathe because you don’t know what’s going to happen to you the next day.” --- The women say the international attention given to their case helped secure their release and also helped them survive their time in jail.

“If a prisoner’s case got attention, they stopped torturing or raping them because they knew the world was watching,” Amirizadeh says."




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