Marina Nemat

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Marina Nemat (b. 1965 in Tehran) is the author of a memoir about growing up in Iran, serving time in Evin Prison for speaking out against the Islamic regime, escaping a death sentence and finally fleeing Iran for a new life in Canada.

1 Life and story
2 Critics
3 Awards
4 Sources
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Life and story

She was brought up as a Catholic in Tehran. Her father worked as a dance teacher, her mother as a hairdresser. She was a high school student when the secular monarchy of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrow by Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution. Marina opposed the oppressive policies of the new Islamic government, attended demonstrations and wrote anti-revolutionary articles in a student newspaper. On January 15, 1982, at age 16 she was arrested and imprisoned for her views against the revolution. She was tortured in the notorious Evin Prison well known for atrocities against political inmates, and sentenced to death.

However, she survived because a prison guard named Ali Moosavi rescued her. He used his connections to obtain commution of the sentence to life imprisonment from which he apparently planned to obtain her release, however it became clear, after five months of imprisonment, that the intention of Moosavi was to force the girl to marry him, as he had developed an attachment to her.

Under threats of persecution of her family, and to guarantee her continuing safety, she was converted to Islam and married Moosavi. See references for a description of the events to follow, including an audio interview with Nemat herself on the BBC's acclaimed Woman's Hour programme first broadcast in 2007, in which she describes marriage to a man she nonetheless hated, and her experience of essentially being raped by him after the forced marriage. She further describes having learnt about how her persecutors in turn had been subjected to brutal violence at the hands of the security forces of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi previous to the 1979 revolution.^[1] ^[2]

In accordance with Moosavi's intention to obtain release for Nemat so that she could come and be his wife, his family eventually obtained her release after 2 years 2 months and 12 days of imprisonment. Her husband was later assassinated by a rival faction of prison guards.

She then secretly married her teenage love Andre Nemat, an electrical engineer in a Christian church despite a law forbidding her, a supposed Muslim convert, from marrying outside her religion.^[3]

They escaped to Canada in 1991 and have two sons. Marina worked at the Aurora franchise of the Swiss Chalet restaurant chain, and wrote her life story in 78,000 words. She knew that many victims did not want to talk about their fate.

In 2005 there was an article about her experiences in the magazine Sunday Star. Her book Prisoner of Tehran was published in 2007 by Penguin and is being translated into 13 languages.

[edit] Critics

However among Iranians there have been some doubts whether the book is her personal experience; also about accuracy and credibility of the details in her memoir. The issue is raised several times by some of the ex-prisoners of Evin at the same period, namely Monireh Baradaran. In a petition that she wrote to the publisher, Penguin Group together with other 24 ex-prisoners she writes:

"We consider the publication of this book of distortions and fiction, an insult to ourselves and the thousands of political prisoners that were executed in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. We consider it our duty to document those horrific events and we strive to do so. (...) The execution scene Ms. Nemat describes is so impossible that it can only be a fiction of the writer’s imagination." ^[4]

Monireh Baradaran who has served in the prison for 9 years writes in a different essay:

"Marina Nemat's depiction of her execution scene seems so fabricated that I can't help but ask myself whether this scene has been stolen from a trivial motion picture. (...) I might not be eligible to make a judgment about the accuracy of Nemat's account of her life before she went to prison or while she was in prison. But the book is so filled with inaccurate information and peculiar tales that the reader loses trust in the narrator right from the very start. My criticism of the book, however, is not merely because of its false, bizarre storyline; it is rather because of Nemat's unrealistic description of prison life. Evin prison is a historic fact. You can't write tall tales about it based on your personal taste or interest."^[5] ^[6]

There have been protests against the letter written by Monereh Baradaran and 24 others by other ex-political prisoners from Iran, including Nasrin Parvaz, who was a prisoner for 8 years . Nasrin Parvaz, who is a writer and has written her own memoir of Evin, has written a ten-page letter in defense of Marina Nemat. In it, Nasrin Parvaz writes (translated from Persian):

"These days if you check some internet sites, you will find hate letters against Marina Nemat and her new book 'Prisoner of Tehran.' Marina was 16 when she was arrested and tortured, and today, she has dared to write of what happened to her, and, suddenly, she is the subject of organized attacks by some individuals and groups. There is a decree against her to silence the victims of the Regime (the Islamic Republic of Iran). (...) People like Marina are not allowed to write in Iran, and, outside the country, these sects intimidate and attack them to cover up the truth. I have to mention that these attacks are limited to the internet." ^[7]

[edit] Awards

Marina Nemat was awarded the first Human Dignity Prize in December 2007. This prize is to be given annually by the European Parliament and the Cultural Association Europa 2004. The Human Dignity Prize "celebrates organizations and individuals working for a world free from intolerance and social injustice, a world where fundamental human rights are respected." ^[8] The Prize Committee said that Nemat was chosen "because of her strength of character despite her life experiences." ^[9]