FP: Minoo Homily, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.                                           

Homily: My pleasure.

FP: Tell us the background to how you were first arrested.

Homily: In the begining months after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, there was a bloody conflict between armed forces of the regime and the civilans in many parts of the country especially in Kuridstan. I was a teenager during this chaotic situation and worked as a paramedic in a hospital, trying to help injured civilians and to gather dead bodies from streets.

How I could manage to survive these dangerous missions is a long story. But, after the city Sanandaj was occupied by govermental forces, many doctors and nurses were arrested and some of them were executed (Shahin Bavafa, supervisor of the “Shohada” hospital in Sanandaj was one of them).

I could not be excluded from this flood of arrests; but, fortunately, they did not recognize me as a paramedic who had been opposing the regime by helping people. So I was released after 2 days. Months later, however, I was arrested again. And this time it was very serious because I was carrying a leaflet from an oppositionist group.

FP: I apologize for discussing things that must be excruciatingly are painful for you. Could you kindly tell us about your ordeal after your arrtest and your experience in the Iranian Gulag?

Homily: I was never in a “Gulag” or a labor camp. It was more like the Auschwitz. I actually spent a long time in solitary confinement and also in public prisons. Different sorts of physical and mental tortures were and are the routine in prisons of Iran. We were whipped; we were deprived from visiting our families; we were kept in solitary for long periods. But these were not all of it. Describing the horror of the situation is not easy. I witnessed lots of my cellmates being taken for execution. The executioners would sometimes force us to eye-witness the massacre of political prisoners in the courtyard of the prison. And I will never forget their devilish laughter while they washed the blood from the ground.

FP: Could you speak a bit about Fazilat Darayi, who is known to be one of the greatest soldiers of freedom?

Homily: She was only 18 when they executed her. She was no criminal, nor had she engaged in any sort of armed activity against the governemtn. They killed her just for her beliefs.

She could have saved her own life if she had abided by the will of the Islamic regime and rejected her beliefs. But she resisted to the last moment, never giving up loving her ideals and exclaiming this love.

She was a heroine, yet she was only one of the thousands of women who fought for freedom and gave their lives for a better tomorrow.

FP: After your years in prison, you became stuck in an abusive marriage. What happened?

Homily: Well, my adolescence had been spent with the smell of blood, prison and torture, execution and gunpowder, having made a rough personality out of me. Consequently, after the prison, I was kind of immature in my natural instincts and with regard to the relationship between man and woman.

This inexperience put me in another prison named marriage, for my marriage was the fruit of a hasty decision without enough knowledge about my husband or about any man at all.

A male-chauvinist traditional man was now my new warden. And he wasted some more years of my life by beating, harassing , and humiliating me. More painfully, the current rules and laws of the society supported this man and not me. Therefore I had no choice but to take my little child and escape from the country.

FP: How did you escape from Iran?

Homily: I escaped via human smugglers. Having a little daughter, being chased by a sick and violent husband, having no passport without the permission of my husband, and being a former political prisoner who was watched by the Intelligence system made my escape a dangerous, breath-taking venture; not to mention the danger of being caught by border police either in Iran or in Turkey. But I made it, and I could introduce myself to the office of the UNHCR, applying for refugee status.

FP: Could you tell us the road to how your application for refugee status was finally accepted.

Homily: Having received a negative answer from UN, I was completely disappointed as I decided to get support from oppositionist political parties and human rights organizations.

They supported me by holding international campaigns over my refugee status, and it worked! UNHCR was finally forced to reopen my case and to give me my very basic right of being accepted as a refugee.

In fact, the hardships I went through during that difficult and disasterous time in Turkey made me committed to start a broad activity in support of all Iranian asylum seekers. There are many asylum seekers now in Turkey, exactly in the same situation in which I was trapped or even worse. There are journalists, authors and writers, students, and activists, not being really heard by the UNHCR. They are in a very fragile situation and could face the danger of deportation at any moment. Moreover, some refugees even have the acceptance from UNHCR, yet the government of Turkey doesn’t allow them to leave Turkey. This specific group of Iranian refugees about 1200 people including women and children, entered Turkey from northern Iraq, and they have been in this hard situation for years and years with no end.

FP: Why do you think the Iranian regime is genocidal? What is at the root of its yearning for mass death and suicide?

Homily: Everybody is aware that Islamic regime of Iran has committed mass murder.Whether or not this is equivalent to the crimes Hitler  committed, could be the subject of an academic argument, and I don't  intend to open such an argument. The Islamic regime committed group-executions, and it has been executing  thousands of political prisoners who had actually been sentenced to  prison and not to death. Many of these victims have been asked three questions, then killed, and then buried in group-graves.

FP: Why do you think that, at the foundation of the Mullah tyranny, there is such a hatred of women and the yearning to humiliate and abuse them? What spawns this instinct of misogyny?

Homily: .In 1357 (1979), the people of Iran revolted against the Shah because they were  discounted and dissatisfied. Under the Shah's regime, women had only a small part of their rights, like freedom to wear what they wished. People revolted in order to improve the economical, political, and social state of the country. People knew about Europe, and they deserved a free life. Once powerfulful countries decided to strengthen the opposition against the Islamic regime, women were the pioneers of this opposition. Women started to defy from the first days  after the revolution, and they stated that "We didn't make this  revolution to go backwards."

This objection of women plus the ideological mindset of Mullahs caused the attack on  women and all the lovers of liberty in Iran.

Although the ideology of the Islamic regime is anti-feminine, this is not the only reason causing the suppression of women. The Mullahs have to do this also for the sake of their political situation. In fact, there are many  Islamic governments, in Egypt for instance, but they don't violate  women's right this much, because their political situation is different.

FP: What is the future of Iran? Is there a way we can help the struggle for freedom there?

Homily: There is surely a way toward freedom, and people are fighting for it.  The experience of Iraq, however, shows that people should achieve liberty all on their own. Any sort of help from outside should be aimed at  strengthening people for opposing mullahs; for, military attack from an outside power could result in fortifying the bases of the Islamic regime.

There is a way toward freedom. This regime should be taken over, and its constitution and rules should be detroyed to the last particle. And instead, the laws similar to of Northern America, Canada, and Europe  should be established. People won't be content to less than this. And they fight for their salvation. These people are to be helped. 

FP: Minoo Homily, thank you for joining us here today. You are an incredibly brave survivor of terror and a noble and couraegous soldier of freedom.

Homily: Thanks for your time.