Hidden Human Rights Emergency in Iran
Caught between War and Repression, Iranian People Desire Peace and Freedom
Iran: Women Prisoners Trapped in the Crossfire: Welcome to another episode of podcasts of the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
Imagine the air raid sirens go off, the bombs start falling.
Right.
If you’re a civilian, you run for shelter. You try to find safety somewhere. But now I want you to imagine you’re a political prisoner. The sirens go off, the ground is literally shaking, the guards flee their posts and instead of opening the gates to let you seek cover you hear the hiss of blow torches.
God.
Yeah. They are actively welding your cell doors shut.
It’s, it’s a horrifying reality and it’s happening right now. We are looking at a population that is dealing with the catastrophic damage and destruction of war while simultaneously facing a doubled wave of domestic repression.
And mass arrests. Right?
Exactly. Mass arrests by the ruling regime. They are essentially trapped.
Documenting Unprecedented Violence
We are documenting the mechanics of a very specific urgent crisis facing the Iranian people and, specifically Iranian women.
Right. And the foundational context we really need to establish comes from Sarah Hossein. She chairs the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran. And she presented a highly detailed report to the UN Human Rights Council back in March 2026. Her team didn’t just, you know, look at satellite imagery. They conducted in-depth interviews with 164 victims and witnesses.
Wow. That’s extensive.
It is. And they documented what Hossein actually called an era of unprecedented violence unleashed against millions of protestors.
This really accelerated after the massive nationwide uprising that began in late December 2025 and exploded in January 2026.
The Pressure Cooker Effect
I want to make sure I’m visualizing this correctly. It’s like, it’s like the government has created a sealed pressure cooker.
That’s a really good analogy. Yeah.
Because they’re squeezing the population internally, right? With these violent crackdowns and mass arrests to crush the uprising. But at the exact same time, the external military pressure, the actual air strikes and threat of war heats the entire vessel from the outside.
That is a highly accurate way to look at it. The civic space has been completely restricted. Hossein’s core finding is that citizens are trapped between armed confrontations on the outside and systematic domestic repression on the inside.
The Regime Is Using War as a Shield
And they’re using war as a shield.
Exactly. The regime is using the cover of external war to settle internal scores, and they’re heavily targeting women who led those January protests.
So if the whole country is a pressure cooker, the prisons must be the absolute epicenter of that pressure. Like, what happens to the people who literally cannot run from the airstrikes? Let’s zoom in on Evin Prison in Tehran.
Yeah. Let’s talk about Evin. It’s currently holding roughly 200 female political prisoners and detainees from the recent uprisings. And on the early morning of Tuesday, March 3, 2026, airstrikes targeted areas surrounding Imam Hossein University.
Which is right next door.
Right next to Evin Prison. The bombardment was so intense that sections of the prison’s perimeter wall were physically damaged.
Wait, I’m stuck on the logistics of this. If bombs are blowing up the perimeter walls, the standard protocol for any institution holding human beings would be, I don’t know, emergency evacuation. Or at least moving people to a fortified basement.
You would expect a baseline duty of care, right?
But the response was actually weaponized against the inmates. Reports indicate that since late February, Evin has been operating under an emergency situation protocol.
Meaning what exactly?
Meaning when the March 3 strikes happened, the administrative staff and the guards largely abandoned their posts to save themselves. But before they fled they didn’t just lock the heavy dead bolts.
Right, the blow torches.
Yeah. According to multiple reports they brought out the equipment to physically weld certain prison doors shut.
Active and Systematic Endangerment of Life
Wait, they actually took the time to weld the doors shut? That takes time. It takes specific equipment. It does. So that tells me this wasn’t just a panic response where someone dropped a key and ran. That implies a calculated pre planned directive to trap these women inside a strike zone. That’s not just neglect. That is active endangerment of life.
It absolutely points to a systemic directive. And it gets worse, honestly. We have terrifying accounts indicating that during one of the bombardments, some prisoners managed to break out of their immediate cell blocks.
Oh, wow.
They ran into the open air of the prison yard, simply trying to avoid being crushed under a collapsing roof. And the regime’s forces actually opened fire on these prisoners in the yard.
They shot at prisoners fleeing a bombing.
Yes.
That is entirely beyond administrative neglect. That is active, lethal hostility. And, legally speaking, isn’t there an established precedent for how a state is supposed to handle prisoners during a war? Because I remember reading something in the source documents about a law from the 1980s.
Yeah. You’re referring to resolution 211 of the High Judicial Council. It dates back to 01/12/1987, which was during the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
Right. So, they already have rules for this.
Manipulating the Law
Exactly. The Iranian legal system itself mandates that during wartime emergencies, the judiciary has a legal obligation to protect prisoners’ lives.
This resolution explicitly authorizes prosecutors to grant conditional release, accept bail, or transfer non-dangerous prisoners, specifically noting political and conscience prisoners, to secure locations.
So, the framework is already on the books. They don’t have to invent a new law to save these people. Have they utilized Directive 211 at all right now?
They have manipulated it, which is almost more cynical than just ignoring it. Available information shows that fewer than 20 individuals have been freed from Evin under these circumstances.
Less than 20 out of everyone.
Less than 20. And the people they released were not the political dissidents or the women arrested in the January uprising. They were mostly individuals imprisoned for petty financial debts.
Unbelievable.
Debts under $750,000,000 Tomans or people with less than four months left on minor sentences.
So they used the law to clear out a tiny handful of petty debtors just to say, look, we’re following protocol while intentionally leaving the political prisoners locked behind weld and steel.
Collapse of Life Support Infrastructure
That is the mechanism of the repression. And because the staff has largely fled, the basic life support infrastructure of Evin has completely collapsed. The hot water has been suspended. The main power grid is failing. In some sections, they are relying entirely on diesel generators that are barely functioning as a stopgap measure.
Let’s think about the physical reality of that. You and I take basic sanitation and medical triage for granted. If you’re trapped behind welded doors, the hot water is cut off, the power is flickering, and 200 women are crammed together, people are going to get sick. It’s a biological inevitability.
The medical vacuum is one of the most pressing crises inside the women’s ward right now. Access to physicians, the prison infirmary, and specialized medication is practically zero.
What happens if someone catches a bug?
To understand the absurdity of the situation, there is currently a spread of severe seasonal colds and respiratory issues among the inmates. The only meditation being distributed by the skeleton crew left behind is Difenhydramine syrup.
Wait. That’s just common over the counter cough syrup.
It is. But it is so heavily hoarded and restricted by the authorities that each sick inmate is instructed to take no more than a single spoonful.
A single spoonful?
Yeah. Tablet medications are deemed insufficient and are highly restricted.
A single spoonful of cough syrup while the infrastructure crumbles around you. And we aren’t just talking about people with the sniffles, right? The documents highlight individuals with severe chronic conditions who are trapped in this environment.
Specific Human Cases
We really need to look at specific human cases to ground these statistics. Consider Shiva Esmaeili, a political prisoner in Evin. She suffers from acute spinal canal stenosis and severe lumbar vertebral complications.
For anyone who doesn’t know, spinal canal stenosis isn’t just a mild backache. It’s a literal narrowing of the spaces within your spine. It puts immense constant pressure on the nerves traveling through the lower back. It causes agonizing shooting pain and can lead to numbness or loss of motor function.
Now imagine managing that condition in an overcrowded prison with failing electricity and zero hot water. She urgently needs specialist examinations and a transfer to a proper medical facility.
But I’m guessing she isn’t getting that.
Not at all. Her treatment has been deliberately postponed for months.
She is left to deteriorate.
It’s essentially torture by medical deprivation.
Exactly. Then there is the case of Elaheh Fouladi. She is battling a tumor in her knee alongside serious lower back conditions. Her situation was deemed so critical that a surgery had actually been scheduled at Tajrish Hospital.
Okay, so they were going to treat her.
They scheduled it but then her transfer was abruptly suspended. The authorities simply blocked her access to vital potentially life saving surgery.
And I imagine the financial burden of all this falls right back onto the prisoners. I saw a note in the reports about the prison store being closed.
Yeah, because the state has completely abandoned its duty of care, the financial cost for bare survival products, whatever supplementary food they can get, basic treatments, it’s all being imposed on the prisoners and their families on the outside.
It’s an economic punishment layered on top of the physical and psychological torment. And this brings us to a really vital point. Evin gets a lot of international attention but it is not an isolated case.
No, not at all.
Qarchak Prison, from Poultry Farm to Detention Hell
This systemic failure is happening across the country, especially as the system floods with detainees from the January 2026 uprising. Let’s shift our focus to Qarchak Prison.
Qarchak Prison, located in Varamin, just south of Tehran, shows us a different but equally horrifying facet of this nightmare. Qarchak is currently holding about 80 women who were detained during the recent January protests. But it is vital to note that some of these women weren’t even actively protesting in the streets. They were arrested simply for attending memorial gatherings at the Behesht-e Zarah Cemetery for those who were killed during earlier demonstrations.
Arrested for mourning. That is the ultimate sign of a fragile state when the simple act of grieving is treated as a national security threat. And for listeners who might not be familiar with Qarchak, we need to explain what this facility actually is Because it wasn’t built to be a prison, was it?
No. Qarchak Prison was established in a building that previously functioned as an industrial poultry facility.
Literally a poultry farm.
A literal poultry farm.
We have to unpack the architecture of that. Poultry farms are designed with specific industrial parameters. They have ventilation systems meant for birds, not human lungs, meaning the air stagnates instantly. They have concrete floors meant to be ‘hosed down’ not lived on. You cannot just slap some bars on a chicken shed and call it a penitentiary.
Overcrowding and Floor Sleeping
You can’t. The structural deficiencies are chronic and catastrophic. And now, under wartime conditions, it has become a true disaster zone. Just like at Evin, the prison staff, including medical personnel and guards, have largely abandoned their posts.
So you take 80 women arrested for mourning or protesting, and you throw them into an abandoned, decaying poultry farm while airstrikes threaten the entire region. What is the physical reality inside those walls right now?
The environmental conditions are degrading rapidly. There is a severe life threatening shortage of safe drinking water.
Wow.
They struggled with plumbing and clean water before the war, but now the crisis has intensified. The infirmary has no basic medical equipment. We are talking about a total lack of blood pressure monitors, oxygen equipment, or facilities for any kind of specialized exam.
And it’s incredibly overcrowded, right?
Extremely. Those 80 women are crammed into a single ward consisting of just five rooms.
Five rooms for 80 people?
Yes. This intense overcrowding leads to a systemic punishment known as floor sleeping. Because there are nowhere near enough beds, dozens of women are forced to sleep shoulder to shoulder on the freezing contaminated concrete floor of this former poultry facility.
Sleeping on concrete, drinking contaminated water, with zero medical infrastructure. It is a calculated breeding ground for disease. And the physical deprivation is paired with an incredibly vicious psychological warfare. The families on the outside are being targeted too.
They are. In-person family visitations have been completely suspended. The families have no reliable information about whether their daughters, sisters, or mothers are safe from the military strikes.
That’s agonizing.
It severs the detainees’ connection to the outside world, which spikes their anxiety to unbearable levels.
Deliberate Losing of Prisoners’ Files
I want you, the listener, to really put yourself in that state of limbo for a second. Imagine sitting on a freezing concrete floor. You haven’t had clean water in days. You can’t see your family. And then an official walks up and casually tells you that the legal paperwork proving you even exist in the justice system has been lost.
The bureaucratic cruelty of that tactic is just staggering. Several of the women detained from the January uprising have been explicitly told by authorities that their case files are lost and that any review of their legal status won’t happen until at least May 2026.
It’s like bureaucratic quicksand. The harder you try to fight for your basic legal rights, the deeper they bury your paperwork. By losing the files, they weaponize administrative incompetence. They strip away any illusion of due process. You’re no longer a citizen awaiting a trial. You are a body warehoused indefinitely in a dangerous, unsanitary space.
Right, it is specifically designed to induce despair and break their spirit. It is designed to make them feel entirely forgotten. But what we are seeing is that despite this immense crushing pressure, despite the welded doors, the lost files, the floor sleeping, and the air strikes, the spirit of these prisoners remains remarkably resilient.
Call to Action
And their voices are not staying trapped behind those walls. They are being amplified on the outside. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, recently posted a highly urgent message.
She called on the international community and global human rights organizations to demand the immediate release of all prisoners, especially these political detainees. Exactly. She made the reality undeniable. Under conditions of bombardment, with prison doors welded shut, the lives of these prisoners are more at risk than ever before.
Peace and Freedom, Genuine Desire of the Iranian People
This brings us to a fundamental realization about the nature of change in Iran, which ties everything we’ve discussed today together.
The country is facing these external military threats. But if you read Sarah Hossein’s UN report, if you listen to the testimonies of the prisoners, and if you look at the statements from the resistance, they all point to one undeniable truth.
Which is?
The genuine desire of the Iranian people is peace and freedom.
Yes.
And we really need to underline that heavily. There is a narrative out there that foreign military intervention somehow liberates people. But the evidence we’ve looked at today proves the exact opposite. Regime change and true transformative freedom do not happen through airstrikes.
Absolutely, not.
Dropping bombs on a country only gives the ruling regime the perfect excuse to declare a state of emergency, weld the prison doors shut, and silently eliminate their internal political rivals under the cover of war.
You hit the nail on the head. External military action solidifies the repression. True change comes from within. It comes through the organized uprisings, like the millions of citizens who risked everything to take to the streets in December 2025 and January 2026.
Right.
Internal Resistance Can Bring About Regime Change
It is the internal resistance of the Iranian people themselves that actually threatens the foundation of this regime.
The people leading that charge are the true engine of change. The regime hopes these women will just disappear into the dark. But because of the meticulous, dangerous documentation work by human rights groups, the UN fact finding missions, and the Iranian Resistance, their names, names like Shiva Esmaeili and Elaheh Fouladi and their exact medical and physical conditions, are being broadcast to the entire world.
The paper trail exists no matter how many files they claim to lose.
You can lock a door, you can even weld it shut, but you cannot permanently silence the truth when people are willing to document it.
Participating in Changing Reality
And now, it is up to us to act on that truth. We invite you, our listener, to take action in support of the Iranian people’s resistance and its incredibly brave women. Don’t just listen to this reality and move on, participate in changing it.
Because every action taken brings international visibility to those trapped in Evin and Qarchak.
We strongly encourage you to donate to the NCRI Women’s Committee. Your contribution goes directly to supporting the genuine cause of the Iranian women’s struggle for freedom, basic human rights and dignity. Please take a moment right now to visit our website, wncri.org, for more information, updates, and concrete ways you can directly help.
That website again is wncri.org.
Thank you so much for joining us for this vital deep dive. Stay informed, stay engaged, and take care of yourselves.
We’ll see you on the next deep dive. Farewell.
