About a decade ago, Ardalan was celebrated and Darius was praised.

“The year of falling, the year of escape, the year of fleeing and waiting. The season of breaking metal. The black year…”

But this time, it wasn’t the year 2000. It was the year 1388 in the Persian solar calendar. A year that can be described as both heaven and hell for human rights activists in Iran. It was heaven because the capabilities of human rights activists in Iran became apparent. A year in which all human rights activists continued their work despite being under the oppression of the Islamic Republic, leaving behind one of their best records. No human rights website, to the best of the writer’s knowledge, stopped its work; not even for a day. However, the following year, some organizations faced internal conflicts. But the year 1388 was the peak of pure and tireless activism for human rights activists.

And the black year. A year in which no one could be found who had not been injured by the wounds of the Islamic Republic’s prison. From all spectrums. All classes. From human rights activists and the three main organizations that were active in Iran, namely the Human Rights Reporters Committee, the Human Rights Activists Organization, and the Human Rights Defenders Association, to activists for the right to education, to labor activists and women’s rights activists; they took them all. It was as if the June 88 coup regime was afraid of any human rights movement that exposed their crimes.

It can be said and statistics show that 9 members of the Human Rights Reporters Committee were arrested in 2009. More than 30 members of the human rights activist community and members of the Human Rights Defenders Center were also arrested. There were widespread arrests of civil activists such as women’s rights activists, labor activists, religious minorities, and strange attacks on human rights activists. The names are familiar, from Shiva Nazar Ahari and Kouhyar Goudarzi of the Reporters Committee to Zia Nabavi, Majid Dorri, Mahdieh Golroo, Peyman Aref, Navid Khanjani, Mahdi Khodayi, and many others in the activist community in February 2010, and Narges Mohammadi Shojai from the Human Rights Defenders Center and many others. Dozens of names can be added to this blacklist. Activists who sacrificed everything for human rights in Iran.

But perhaps after 4 years have passed from those difficult days, we can highlight a few things and talk about it.

The first difficult days of life are under the conditions of detention and torture by allies. The first condition for the peace of mind of a person and their comfortable life is security. Security means being able to leave the house in the morning and return home at night, and this was taken away from human rights activists in all years of the Islamic Republic’s rule, especially in 1988. Every morning departure from the house felt like the last one. Especially after the sentences of over ten years for Majid Darri and Zia Nabavi, this issue became more prominent. The atmosphere of fear and terror, the atmosphere of oppression and violation, and fear that ruled over the people. Many human rights activists (at least in the committee and group that the writer is aware of) spent days and maybe even more than a month in their friends’ houses, under surveillance, and slept there in order to be able to report and at the same time escape from the information and the Revolutionary Guards who were after

But in addition to this atmosphere of horror and fear in society, despite it, the fear of rulers from spreading news was dominant. Human rights news and the activism of activists in spreading these news was like a storm on the head of the corrupt regime. All efforts of interrogators and security forces in Iran were to pluralize the space, polarize the forces, and separate them using military power to prevent any human rights group from following the situation of a group of political prisoners belonging to this organization and that political group. However, human rights activists in Iran were not imprisoned in such an atmosphere and in that year, and this game of domination was also defeated.

And alongside all of these, let us not forget: interrogations of those who were free, threats, insults, and security forces’ insults to anyone involved in human rights activities.

Sometimes difficult times make people tough, and those tough times in 1988 trained human rights activists who will definitely be useful in the future of Iran.

A few days have passed since the election. I am sitting in cell 209 in Evin, where the post-election detainees have been brought. I asked one of my friends, who was a member of the youth movement for freedom, who has been detained and found out that almost all young activists from reformist and pro-democracy parties, as well as those from the revolutionary movement to the freedom movement, have been arrested.

After my release in July, one of the questions that I had from before June 2009 until after that was: Who is free?! A question that until the end of 2009, no one had an answer to. They took everyone, even the indifferent ones. I remembered that famous poem by Bertolt Brecht…

But the disgrace was that human rights activists, in the context of the Islamic Republic, were all without exception affiliated with the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (as an example of an armed, militant, and anti-government organization with an interpretation of the Islamic Republic). A scholar or a mujahid was considered a hypocrite. Even if they were not themselves, their website (despite being lifeless and needing someone to give it life) was affiliated with the Mujahedin. A bitter irony that brings both laughter and sadness. And on this basis, the initial charge for activists after their arrest was usually Article 186; meaning waging war against God. There was even discussion about the possibility of executing Shiva Nazar Ahari and the atmosphere was so heavy that the slogan “Free Shiva” changed to “Don’t execute Shiva”. In other words, the demand shifted from her freedom to her survival. The level of demand for human rights activists in that year was survival.

In 2009, from the very first days of finding the statistics of martyrs and organizing them until the last days and the atmosphere of fear and terror after the widespread arrest of human rights activists, it was difficult and heavy for human rights in Iran. However, it can be said that Iranian human rights emerged victorious from this affliction and the Islamic Republic system was defeated. Despite all the attempts to suppress and control, it could not prevent the progress of the free flow of information and defense of human rights by these pioneers.

And all the disagreements between human rights activists and the Islamic Republic were about one thing: the security of the system’s founders. Part of the opposition, who were affiliated with this group or that group, generally considered themselves outside the realm of humanity. And human rights, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international covenants, are the rights of all human beings regardless of their race, skin color, or blood. In fact, as George Orwell said in Animal Farm, for the system, everyone was equal and some were more equal than others, and for human rights, everyone is equal without any discrimination. The basis of the conflict between the understanding of security of the system’s founders and supporters of absolute power in Iran was about human rights. A subject that is actually a disagreement about being human, whether we are human or not, and our approach to the ruling system in Iran; the self-centeredness of the rulers is also the root cause of this issue.

Winter of 88 was brutally cold. The arrest of over 30 human rights activists made it even colder. It was winter, and in Iran, until human rights are respected, it will always be winter.