The present article is dedicated to the approach of human rights activists towards the process of forced confession and retribution in the prisons of despotic rulers. How the captive is forced to express repentance and remorse to the point where he even turns his back on his ideals and values ​​and accepts the values ​​and ideology of his captor, and in this way even turns from a victim to a torturer, has many psychological answers: The captive’s need for emotional survival forces him to adapt to the new environment in captivity. Being separated from the social group and its group values, he sees no other way than accepting the captive values ​​and the prison environment (change of identity and group identification). The interrogator and torturer sometimes also plays the role of the prisoner’s supporter, and for this reason, he may establish some kind of emotional bond with him (emotional dependence). Also, he becomes indifferent to the behavior of his captors over time and gets used to doing what he is told to survive (desensitization). When the prisoner of Darband turns his back on his ideals or so to speak breaks, he may even try to play the role of interrogator and torturer for his friends and comrades, because he imagines that they should also follow his path as soon as possible to get out of this predicament. become All these psychological explanations touch on one main point: The fact that human captivity degrades a person from a self-aware, responsible and free-to-choice creature to a creature that fights only for its physical-emotional and personality survival.

But how the captured person can resist the expression of repentance and repentance is not the main question. The more important question is before the public opinion and especially the human rights activists: How should they deal with these forced confessions and the retribution process? Because in principle, the purpose of forced confessions and broadcast of statements of remorse and repentance by civil rights activists and political opponents in Darband is to affect people emotionally. Seeing the expression of remorse and repentance, people’s perception of these civil activists as “symbols of resistance” is broken. This is where the role of a human rights activist is needed to thwart this strategy of the government.

Our response should be “simple” but resulting from a deep insight into “freedom”. When someone is taken captive, his life is under the control and will of the captor, so as long as he is in captivity, he should not be considered the owner and responsible for any of his words and actions. Simply, whatever the captive does and says is the actions and words of the captor and not the captive himself. Because the freedom of action is a necessary condition for doing an action, and as long as the freedom and authority are taken away from the person, he should not even be considered as the speaker of the speech that is apparently heard from his mouth. Based on this, no court is allowed to consider the confessions that were taken under duress and without the presence of a lawyer.

So, the confession of a captive is simply the captor’s confession of torture. The human rights activist is not even allowed to broadcast and share these confessions. But as I said, the goal of a despotic government is to have an emotional impact on the people and to collapse the feeling of belonging and sympathy of the people to the captive. Even when people admit it, this emotional influence works.

The issue here is that conscience and public opinion should not be influenced by emotions, but everyone should try to judge based on reason, like a fair court; In such a way that everyone is considered innocent until they are convicted in a competent court and through a fair legal process (something that all authoritarian regimes such as Iran’s regime lack), and every confession and every action by a captive in the conditions of captivity Consider invalid. This emotional impact of authoritarian governments will disappear if the court of public opinion, like a fair and factual court, judges based on evidence and not emotions.

Certainly, many of the Towaabs of the past accepted their captive values ​​because they knew that by breaking down and confessing under duress, they would be condemned and would not stand a chance in the court of public opinion of their fellow countrymen. So they considered the bridges behind them to be destroyed. Therefore, the task of human rights activists today is to rebuild a “Court of public opinion” that recognizes the principles of human rights, the rights of prisoners, and the conditions of a fair trial, and judges accordingly. Therefore, these public opinions are not easily influenced by forced confessions, penances, and reparations, and the propaganda tricks of despotic governments are neutralized.

But this “simple” approach to making rewards, while simple, is solid, inviolable and unexceptional. More importantly, it teaches us a deep and existentialist vision of “freedom”. This bitter reality, that in the absence of freedom, a person even loses his identity and becomes his own rewarder and torturer, shows that freedom is not only a possibility and ability that is given to man from outside, but a precondition and It is an essential part of human existence and the definition of his humanity and identity. Therefore, freedom is a prerequisite for personality and identity, and when a captive person loses his freedom completely, his identity may also be in danger.