Unsilence Voice: The Story of Mohammadi, is a short film by the Washington Kurdish Institute (WKI), covering the humanitarian work of a Kurdish teacher in Iranian Kurdistan named Zara Mohammadi. Her work toward affected communities by natural disasters and teaching the Kurdish language to children ended her in an Iranian prison. Many Kurdish activists are being wrongfully detained, imprisoned, and sentenced by the Iranian regime, but Zara’s story stands out because of the harshness of her treatment and the sentence itself. In 2021 alone, nearly a hundred Kurdish activists were arbitrarily detained or arrested by Iranian security forces for advocating for Kurdish rights.
Background:
Zara Mohammadi is a young Kurdish woman born in Sanandaj (Sena) in the Kurdistan region of Iran, known as Eastern Kurdistan, or Rojhelat. She became a voluntary teacher of the Kurdish language when she was 18 and spent the last eleven years working as a teacher. Zara became an active participant in the struggle for Kurdish rights in Iran. She is the Co-founder of a Kurdish Socio-Cultural Association called Nozhin. In her work with Nozhin, she has been integral to teaching the Kurdish language and serving the community, such as helping with disaster relief for Kermanshah and Lorestan provinces in Iranian Kurdistan. In 2018, floods destroyed parts of Lorestan, and the area received minimal aid from the Iranian authorities. Zara and her colleagues rushed to relieve the displaced peoples, collecting support and distributing it to them. Zara’s help to Lorestan angered officials because she was helping fellow Kurds. Her work rejuvenated the Kurdish identity in an area that suffered a comprehensive assimilation policy. Additionally, Zara was a fighter for social rights for women, children, minorities, and the poor. She is described as being someone willing to do anything for their community.
On May 23, 2019, the Iranian Intelligence (Ettela’atEttela’at) raided Zara’s home and arrested her. The Ettela’at is one of the brutal tools of the Iranian regime used to repress the population, mainly the Kurds. Zara was in solitary confinement and tortured in an undisclosed location. She spent seven months in a dark room of the Ettela’at before her case was transferred to the Iranian “judiciary.” Tens of thousands of people in Iran and outside protested Zara’sZara’s arrest, leading the Iranian authorities to release her on bail. However, on July 14, 2020, Zara was sentenced to ten years in prison by one of Iran’s Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj for teaching Kurdish children their native language and for having been involved in other cultural activities.
In October 2020, the Sanandaj Court of Appeal reduced the term to five years despite overwhelming evidence proving her innocence. Zara was denied the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Attorney General of the Kurdistan province finalized her sentence. The verdict was handed down without regard for the assisting judge’s review of the case that found 69 violations of their laws during the appeals process.
On Saturday, January 8, 2022, the Iranian authorities admitted Zara to prison to spend her five years of injustice sentence in Sanandaj. According to Amnesty International, Zara was charged “solely in connection with her work empowering marginalized members of Iran’sIran’s. Special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javid Rehman, writes in a report published in 2021 that Zara Mohammadi was sentenced after an unfair trial.