Six Iranian men began a hunger strike April 4 in protest of plans by the British government to send them back to Tehran. Differing media sources have reported that either two or four of the men—including a 17-year-old boy—sewed their lips shut April 4 when they began their strike.
The four—who are among six protesters to have not eaten since April 4—say they were beaten and tortured by Iranian authorities after they were found to have taken part in the mass anti-regime protests in 2009. One of the men also claimed that he was raped while detained.
The men say their lives would be in danger if they are deported to Iran, and say authorities in the UK have “ignored and dismissed” their claims since they sought refuge in that country last year.
“We have sewn our mouths because there is no other way. Nobody in the UK hears us or cares what we say, so we have no other option but to do this,” said Keyvan Bahari, 32, who has scars across his back and arms from what he said was 12 days of being slashed with razor blades by authorities in Iranian when he was a student.
Bahari told The Guardian of the UK he is a former wrestling champion who ran his own training center in Tehran. He complained that the media and government in the UK and US encouraged him and the masses of Iranian youth to stand up against the regime in Tehran, but had now “washed their hands” of the protesters and left them to deal with the consequences.
“When I was back in Tehran, I was seeing Obama and British officials on our illegal satellite TVs, encouraging us day-in and day-out to continue our protest,” said Bahari, who is one of three men camping outside the Lunar House immigration center in Croydon.
Speaking through sewn-up lips, which are have already become sore and infected, Bahari said: “They said that they will support us but now that I’m stuck in here and need help, they are nowhere.” He didn’t name the British and American officials he says encouraged protests.
In the United States, many Republicans complained that President Obama was not doing enough to back the protests. Within the US government, however, many officials oppose vocal support for protests, like those in Iran in 2009 and those going on right now across the Arab world, precisely to avoid making any moral commitment to protesters. There is concern that actual encouragement of opposition would obligate the US government to aid protesters if their movement should fail.
Bahari told CNN why he was arrested. “Like everyone else, we were demonstrating for justice, we wanted to know where our vote went. There was a demonstration and people set fire to the bank. Because they set the bank on fire, police came and wanted to shoot people. Me, my brother and some other guys, went and took the weapons from the police, and flipped the police cars. Then one of the protesters set a police car on fire. From that incident, we were identified, our pictures taken and we were targeted. We were forced to flee.”
The men said that while they are continuing with their hunger strike, they are taking liquids; but doctors fear that their health could deteriorate quickly.
Mahyar Meyari, 17, told The Guardian that he was raped after being arrested following a demonstration on Qods Day in 2009—shortly after President Ahmadi-nejad was officially declared the winner of the disputed presidential election. “I was blindfolded and taken to an unknown place where I was kept for a week. I was kicked on the head by batons many times … and even raped,” he told The Guardian. He said, “I think they would have killed me by now if I was in Iran.”
Meyari paid someone to smuggle him out of the country, but says he did not know where he was being taken before he finally arrived in the UK after a 16-day journey. “I can’t explain how I feel here. I can’t believe what’s happening to me,” he said. “When I claimed asylum with the Home Office, they first didn’t believe that I’m 17 years old. They said I was lying. There’s a culture of disbelief in the Home Office, everybody thinks you are lying by default.”
All of the men filed for asylum, but each request was denied; a few of the men are currently involved in appeals. Bahari expressed his discontent with the entire application process.
“I’m very discontent about my legal representation,” Bahari said. “I saw my lawyer more as a Home Office officer than a lawyer there to protect my rights. He was more looking after the rights of the Home Office.”
Akbar Karimian, an Iranian activist who has been helping the group, told The Guardian, “The people who are supposed to interview asylum seekers in the Home Office, they do not interview these people, they interrogate them. They search for an error or a mistake in their testimonies so that they can find contradictory evidence to reject their claim. You imagine that the officers in a refugee organization of this government are there to help these vulnerable people, but they are there to find a way to send them back.”
But a government spokesman denied those claims, telling The Guardian the UK Border Agency “takes every asylum application it receives seriously.” The spokesman said the men were given “every opportunity to make their representations to us as well as a right to appeal the decision to the courts.”
Bahari, Meyari and their fellow protesters are not the only ones who have recently publically protested their fate. One man died after setting himself on fire in Amsterdam last month, while 25 Iranians sewed their lips together in Greece in an attempt to be granted refugee status.
The Medical Foundation, which is preparing a report on Meyari’s condition for his next appeal, says 293 Iranians were referred to the organization for help last year.
Lying in the tent, Mahyar said the UK hunger strikers, like many fellow Iranians, were prepared for drastic action. “I prefer to die here than going back to Iran. I’ll continue this protest until somebody comes here and asks me why I’m doing this, until somebody cares about what has happened to me.”
Meyari is still appealing his decision, but Bahari has exhausted his legal options and is waiting to be deported. “This is my message to the government,” Bahari told CNN. “Okay, I’m ready. Send me back to Iran, but not the others—and see what happens to me. You don’t know what it’s like to be tortured. But I know what will happen to me if I go back to Iran.”