Lindsey Hilsum describes meeting a former basij militiaman, who says he was tortured after refusing to take part in the beating and rape of protestors.
One by one the stories are coming out Iran, carried by the beaten, broken souls who end up in Europe, desperate and hopeless, their lives destroyed.
I have just met another of these troubled people, a former basij militiaman, who says he was tortured after refusing to take part in the beating and rape of protestors.
I heard first heard of Ali back in December when we reported an incident in which basij leaders in an Iranian town allegedly ordered basij members to commit atrocities. (Ali is not his real name of course – we’re taking care to protect his identity.)
As we reported at the time, several basij refused to take part. Ali was arrested for the stance he took.
In our interview he described the appalling treatment he says he was subjected to in prison, including a mock execution. But he says for him the worst thing was when his cellmate – another of his group of basij – was sexually assaulted with a baton.
Always with these stories, the question is: how are you sure it’s true? The testimony of defectors, dissidents and refugees is often unreliable and journalists have to recognise that we can never be 100 per cent sure of anything we haven’t seen with our own eyes.
But Ali’s story corroborated another I had heard on a separate occasion. I have seen Ali’s documents including his membership card for the basij.
I spoke to a person familar with asylum cases, who said: “His documents seem reliable, and you can see this is not made up. His knowledge of the basij is strong. And his own behaviour, his character – you can see all the traces of the Islamic ways and views.”
The Persian-speaking journalist/interpreter I work with noted that he spoke the flowery religious Persian particular to the basij. Other sources I know of – I can’t say who – are also vouching for these accounts.
I would add that it’s hard to fake weeping for the duration of an interview which lasted nearly two hours.
From Ali, I learnt more about the basij and the motivation of young men like him who were raised to love the Islamic Revolution.
“I grew up in a religious family and reached the age when I could understand what was going on during the month of Moharram, the rituals at the mosque,” he explained.
“When it came to Ramadan, I fasted. So I wanted to join the basij. In Moharram, Ramadan, in these religious months they carried out responsibilities. When I saw these things it made me want to have basij responsibilities. I loved Islam, I loved the Supreme Jurisprudence.
“You see it is ordinary people who join the basij. They enter the organisation of their own free will, because it’s an organisation of the people. People join of their own will and their activities with the basij are driven by their own desire, out of love.”
In other words, the basij is a cult. Few things are more painful than the moment you realise that you have been brainwashed – and that’s what Ali feels now.
“I joined the basij at an age when I was like putty that could be moulded,” he told me. “We’re Muslims. Our religion is Islam. We recognise God. When you consider everything, in the end it was very different to all that they said. Those things were very far from Islam.
“Islam had become a curtain for them, from behind which they could do whatever they wanted. Directives were presented as the Islamic directives: ‘Everything we say is Islam. You musn’t question Islam. Disagreement with our directives is disagreement with Islam’. In other words – disagreement with God. We became like machines. They took away our personal control.”
Basij members get privileges – Ali said that not all his motives were noble: “When I looked at my friends, they didn’t have the car I had, the job I had, the further education I had, that had come to me so easily,” he said.
All gone now.
“They’d said that as soon as we know that you’re no longer active with us we will take away all these benefits,” he said.
“That’s one of the things that I’ve lost this year. Part of me says so what? They can keep it. But then I think I had to leave my country, be estranged from my family and far from my fiancée.”
How many basij members have had doubts about what their leaders are requiring them to do? We have no way of knowing.
Ali was smuggled out of the country, and arrived here by a roundabout route crossing several different countries. Others, I’m told, have washed up in different places.
He’s now struggling to cope in a place where almost no-one can understand his experiences. And where what he has endured is so horrific few could begin to countenance the pain he is going through.