These women, whose greatest crime seems to be their existence, were imprisoned by the Islamic Republic of Iran for their beliefs, activism and demands for democracy.

Their testimonials were shared within prison walls. All but two of the women are free today, although some endure continuing mental and physical health issues following imprisonment and a couple have had difficulty resuming their pre-incarceration lives.

I became aware of their agonising experiences in February, while visiting the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. Walking through the exhibit, dedicated to 2023’s Nobel Prize laureates, one particular photograph caught my eye. Had two teenagers really received one of the highest awards for the promotion of world peace?

Looking closer, I realised that they were, in fact, the children of Narges Mohammadi, Kiana and Ali Rahmani, who were accepting the honour of the Nobel Peace Prize for her book White Torture, written while she was locked up in Evin prison in Tehran. Living in exile in Paris, they have not seen their mother in nine years.

Since 2009, Mohammadi has been imprisoned multiple times by the Iranian state. She has already served 12 years on overlapping charges, but White Torture led her to be sentenced to a further 15 months for ‘spreading propaganda against the state’ while in prison.

Inspired to learn more, I picked up her book. What I learnt left me feeling both exasperated and resentful, but also hopeful. The women’s resistance and their willingness to hold to their beliefs through their suffering, declining offers to be set free if they stopped speaking out, gave me hope for the future of Iran.

Mohammadi interviewed 13 of her fellow women prisoners about their experiences, many of them incarcerated in the infamous section 209 of Evin prison. The book is simple and easy to follow – 13 interviews; question, answer, question, answer – as well as Mohammadi’s account of her own imprisonment.

We learn primarily about the women’s experiences of prison and the conditions and humiliations they were subjected to, but we also learn poignant and heart-wrenching details about the women themselves.

We learn about their activism, bravery, medical conditions, fears, families and memories, helping us understand the faces behind the people targeted, vilified and tormented by their government. Some are not even activists or journalists but ordinary citizens whose greatest crime was their existence.

The central subject of the testimonies is solitary confinement, the ‘white torture’ of the book’s title. It is a loss of humanity – both in yourself, as you are treated as subhuman and deprived of the most basic necessities day after day, year after year – and in your jailer.

The interviews also force the reader to consider the humanity of those who confine prisoners, who deny them the right to talk to their families or for them to know if they are alive, who watch them suffer, force them to wake up with nothing in a bare cell every day, or even joke at their predicament.

These are their names: Narges Mohammadi (still in prison), Nigara Afsharzadeh, Atena Daemi, Zahra Zahtabchi (still in prison), Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Mahvash Shahriari, Hengameh Shahidi, Reyhaneh Tabatabai, Sima Kiani, Fatemeh Mohammadi, Sedigheh Moradi, Nazila Nouri, Shokoufeh Yadollahi, and Marzieh Amiri.

Marzieh Amiri, a journalist and activist for students’ and women’s rights, draws our attention to the plight of activist women in the context of the patriarchy – particularly strong and fearsome under the Islamic Republic – and how this differs from that of men. She theorises that a woman’s “rebellion” or “disobedience” and “mere presence in the interrogation cell” is already a victory because that woman has chosen to fight back against her inferior position in society by confronting the fundamental inequality of “hierarchical politics”.

One of the women is a figure many British readers may recognise. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian citizen who was arbitrarily accused of spying, effectively taken hostage and released in 2022, after six years in prison, once the UK government had paid back a long-standing debt, talks about the health issues she faced in prison.

The book constantly juxtaposes two main themes: the brutality of totalitarianism and the enduring determination of Iranian women, who even through tiny windows in their filthy stone cells, were able to catch sight of a glimmer of hope to continue resisting.

Faced with a government, a police force, even a justice system set on crushing their spirit, hiding their protest from the world and silencing them, these women were able to resist and now continue their campaign for justice. Along with their moving accounts, the book was also truly heart-warming – a reminder that even a brutal repressive state is not all-powerful and will not last forever, and that even in the bleakest situations hope can always be found.

In her letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in October 2023, Mohammadi discussed the oppression of women, a primary weapon of the Islamic Republic.

She used the murder of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in 2022, which caused widespread international protest, as an example, to explain that the motivation behind Iran’s imposition of compulsory hijab rules is to openly “oppress and dominate women in this way as a means of dominating Iranian society as a whole”. She continues that the “strength of this movement lies in the agency of Iranian women”.

Youth and women make up a large proportion of those striving for not only democracy and human rights in Iran, but also durable peace worldwide.

Although Mohammadi was unable to receive her prize, news of it was broadcast to the women’s wing of Evin prison. As the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee uttered the words “Zan, Zendengi, Azadi” (‘Woman, Life, Freedom’), Mohammadi writes that she heard her cellmates’ “exultant cries echoing that powerful slogan,” their voices fusing together, “reverberating with the ‘protesting power’ of Iranians around the world”.

Mohammadi’s vision for the future is simple, and one that I, along with many others, share to “demand democracy, freedom, human rights and equality”. She concludes: “I ask you to support the people of Iran until our final victory. Our victory will not be easy, but it is certain.”

For oppressive regimes, silence is a powerful weapon. Silence of their own people, silence of the national media, silence of the international community. But if the voices of protesters are heard, if their stories are listened to, the Islamic Republic can no longer hide from its crimes.

So I urge you to pick up this book, to stand with Narges Mohammadi, who has risked so much to publish these testimonies, and the courageous women who have shared memories of their darkest days.