Faraj Sarkohi

Faraj Sarkohi, 2012

Faraj Sarkohi or Faraj Sarkuhi ( Persian فرج سرکوهی, further spellings: Faradj , and Sarkouhi , Sarkoohi ; * November 3, 1947 in Shiraz ) is an Iranian literary critic and journalist . He was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Iranian magazine Adineh .

Life

Early life, college, and prison

Faraj Sarkohi spent his school days in Shiraz. He studied social sciences and Persian literature in Tabriz . There he was one of the group around Samad Behrangi . He published the student magazine Adineh. Due to various activities against the Shah and numerous articles critical of the regime, he was sentenced to three months in 1966 and one year in 1967. In 1971 he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In 1978, shortly before the Islamic Revolution , he was released with the last group of political prisoners in the wake of amnesty waves.

After the revolution

After his release and during the brief period of relative political freedoms, he wrote for the magazines Tehran Mossavar and Iran. After the suppression of political forces and the ban on all non-government magazines by the Islamic regime, he involuntarily withdrew from public life for several years.

Adineh

In 1985 he founded the magazine Adineh with Massoud Behnoud , Sirus Alinejad and Golamhossein Zakeri . From 1988 to 1996 he was editor-in-chief of Adineh, which is considered to be the most important independent magazine for art, society and politics in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to his work as editor-in-chief, he wrote many reviews and essays and interviewed important Iranian personalities such as Hossein Alizadeh , Ahmad Schamlou , Huschang Golschiri , Alireza Espahbod , Mahmoud Dowlatabadi , Mehdi Bāzargān and Parwiz Natel Chanlari .

Sarkohi was involved in the establishment of the commission to review the Persian script and the publication of the results of this commission in Adineh.

Writers Association

Sarkohi was instrumental in the reorganization of a writers' association since 1980. The activities of the Writers' Union culminated in an open letter in 1994, which became famous in Iran under the name Text der 134 . In this letter, 134 Iranian writers, journalists, translators, poets, etc. demanded more freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Iran.

Sarkohi was one of the eight people (the others were: Hushang Golschiri , Sima Kuban , Reza Baraheni , Mohammad Mokhtari , Mansour Kushan , Mohammad Mohammadali , Mohammad Khalili ) in the “Commission of Eight” of the association and was decisive in the creation of the letter and the Collection of signatures involved.

Arrest and exile

Sarkohi was subject to constant repression by the regime for his work as editor-in-chief of Adineh and his position in the Writers' Union and was temporarily arrested several times.

In July 1996, six Iranian writers, including Faraj Sarkuhi, were invited to dinner by the German embassy. During the meal at the German cultural attaché Gust, where the conversation, according to Sarkohi, was not about political questions, the house was stormed by the Iranian secret service and the six guests were arrested for two days.

In August 1996, Sarkohi was together with 21 Iranian journalists, poets and writers on a bus trip to a writers' conference in the mountains of Armenia. The bus driver tried twice to steer the bus into a ravine, with the driver jumping out of the driver's door at the last second. Both times, the inmates narrowly escaped death only through fortunate circumstances. The first time the bus driver's insurance company was believed to have accidentally nodded off. The second time it was clear that it was a targeted murder attack (the bus driver fled the scene). The attempted murder was one of a whole series of murders and attempted murders of intellectuals and opposition activists in Iran, known as “ chain murders ”, in which the Iranian secret service was involved.

On November 3, 1996, he was on his way to Germany, where he wanted to visit his family at the airport Mehrabad by the Iranian secret ( Wezārat-e Ettela'at wa Amniat-e Keschwar arrested). Iranian officials claimed that Sarkohi had arrived safely in Germany, which his family denied. After 47 days of imprisonment and torture in an undisclosed location, he was briefly released during a forced press conference on December 20, 1996, claiming he had returned to Iran after a trip to Europe. The secret service made bogus, previously rehearsed video interviews with Sarkohi, in which he accused himself of adultery and homosexuality.

In his short time outside of prison, he wrote a letter to his wife in Germany on January 3, 1997, which later became known as "Faraj Sarkohi's Letter of Sorrows". In it he described the repression against the intellectuals and writers in Iran and the real facts and circumstances of his arrest. He stated in the letter that five minutes of his 47 days in prison were more excruciating than the entire eight years of imprisonment he had suffered during the Shah's period and expressed his complete uncertainty about what would still await him and whether his long letter ever reached the addressees. On January 27, 1997, he was arrested again and charged with spying for a foreign state and wanting to illegally leave Iran. Due to the efforts of his wife, international protests on the part of various human rights organizations, but also some Western governments, he was not executed. On September 20, 1997, the official Iranian news agency IRNA announced the verdict. Sarkohi was sentenced to one year in prison. Worldwide public protests (for example, the then German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel campaigned personally for Sarkohi in two letters to his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Velayati ) finally moved the Iranian government to grant Sarkohi an exit permit after his release in 1998. The story of his arrest has been linked from various sources to the Mykonos assassination attempt and trial that was being negotiated in Berlin at the time. It was suspected that the Iranian regime wanted to influence the outcome of the trial in its favor with his arrest.

live in Germany

Sarkohi traveled to Germany, where he initially found accommodation in Frankfurt am Main as a guest of the “Cities of Refuge” project. From 2000 to 2006 he was a scholarship holder of the “Writers in Exile” project, which is supervised by the PEN Center Germany .

He is an honorary member of the PEN Center Germany and has been the human rights officer there since 2006.

He writes articles on Iranian culture and politics in various German-language magazines such as Die Zeit , Süddeutsche Zeitung and NZZ . Articles, essays and reviews by him appear several times a week on the Persian-language news portal Radio Farda . He writes for the BBC Persian website .

Works

• Naghshi az Rouzegar (A Sketch of Fate). 1990, Shiva Verlag, Tehran
• Shab-e dardmand-e arezumandi (the painful night of hope). 1999, Baran Verlag, Stockholm
• Yas-o-das (lilac and scythe). 2002, Baran Verlag, Stockholm
• The yellow of ripe lemons . In: Sinn und Form , issue 3/2001, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin

Prices

• 1998: Tucholsky Prize for politically persecuted writers
• 1999: The Golden Pen of Freedom of the World Association of Newspapers ( World Association of Newspapers 'World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award )
• 2000: World Press Freedom Hero 2000 ( International Press Institute Prize )

About Sarkohi

• Look Europe , play by Ghazi Rabihavi, direction and participation: Harold Pinter .
• Faradsch Sarkuhi , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 35/1998 from August 17, 1998, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
• Christopher de Bellaigue: In the rose garden of the martyrs. A portrait of Iran. Translated from the English by Sigrid Langhaeuser, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006 (English original edition: London 2004), pp. 288–291

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sarkohi: Shab-e dardmand-e arezumandi . Baran Verlag, Stockholm 1999, back
2. ↑ Sarkohi: Shab-e dardmand-e arezumandi . Baran Verlag, Stockholm 1999, back
3. ↑ Sarkohi: Shab-e dardmand-e arezumandi . Baran Verlag, Stockholm 1999, pp. 363-369
4. ↑ ^{a b} Sarkohi: Yas-o-das . Baran Verlag, Stockholm 2002
5. ↑ Herta Müller : Sarkuhi is innocent. Zeit online, August 1, 1997, accessed December 2, 2018 . 
6. ^ Sarah Fowler: Iran's Chain Murders: A wave of killings that shook a nation. BBC News, December 2, 2018, accessed December 2, 2018 . 
7. ↑ A Harrowing Experience at Home: Faraj Sarkuhi's Letter . In: Iranian Studies . tape 30 , no. 3/4 , 1997, p. 367-377 , doi : 10.1080 / 00210869708701886 (English).
8. ↑ iranian.com
9. ↑ Committed to writers . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 12, 1997
10. ^ Norbert Siegmund: The Mykonos process . P. 280
11. ↑ ^{a b c} literaturfestival.com
12. ↑ pen-deutschland.de ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Disappeared twice, reappeared twice: The martyrdom of the Iranian regime critic Faraj Sarkuhi . In: Die Zeit , No. 7/1997
14. ^ Norbert Siegmund: The Mykonos process . Pp. 279-296
15. ↑ fami.oszbueroverw.de ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
16. ↑ hagalil.com
17. ↑ freemedia.at
18. ↑ freemedia.at ( Memento of the original from June 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
19. ↑ amnesty.org.uk ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.