Why We Must Oppose Solitary Confinement

Narges Mohammadi, vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran, has been held in solitary confinement on and off from 1998 and 2020 for her human rights advocacy. On Tuesday night, Mohammadi was arrested by Iranian security forces during a ceremony honoring a victim of Iran’s deadly response to November 2019 protests. She was taken to the notorious Evin prison.

Since her release in October 2020, Narges has tried to draw attention to the practice of “white torture”—a form of solitary confinement—in Evin and other Iranian prisons. That is the topic of this article—the first she has written in English.