Iranwire – A young mother, Sima Moradbeigi, faced severe consequences for her role in Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
Despite losing mobility in her right arm after being shot during the protests, she continues to fight for justice from her new home in Germany.
Almost a year ago, IranWire published the story of the crime in which Sima Moradbeigi was the victim. This time, IranWire spoke to her in Germany, where she is raising her daughter Zhouan as a single mother with a hand that she cannot move.
On October 13, 2022, a month after the Zhina [Mahsa Amini] movement started, the streets of the Kurdish town of Bukan in West Azerbaijan province were filled with fire and smoke. Amid this, an armed man with a covered face inside the courtyard of the city’s old hospital put the tip of the gun on Sima’s elbow; he pulled the trigger without any warning.
Sima’s arm broke in half or, as she puts it, was “deboned.” The same night, in the hospital, shattered pieces of her crushed and bloody bones fell from her arm to the ground.
IranWire met Sima in Germany in front of the camera. Her arm is now tied to a splint. Soon, she would go under surgery to reattach her bones without her elbow. No prosthesis would replace her elbow. Her elbow-less arm would be a lasting proof of the Islamic Republic’s crime.
Recounting the traumatic event, Seema says, “A tall man in black, a member of the Islamic Republic’s anti-riot police, pushed his gun through the bars and put its tip on my arm. There was no space in between. I saw him the moment that I turned my head. I thought that he wanted to frighten me so that I would run away but he immediately fired. My forearm was hanging by the skin and I was severely bleeding.”
Even after several surgeries, more than 200 metal pellets remain in her arm.
In all her stories of the Zhina Movement, Sima did not appear merely as a fighter for liberty or a survivor of one the most violent suppressions of protesters by the Islamic Republic. Her words, her tears, and her hopes were the voice of a mother who took to the streets for her daughter, and on the night of the incident, she fought against death for the sake of Zhouan.
Sima narrates, “The feeling of being a mother was the power that convinced me that I must go out. I cannot say that I was not afraid, but this same feeling of motherhood gave me the courage to go out. Were it not for Zhouan, perhaps I would have lacked this courage.” She continues, “After I was shot and my right hand was paralyzed, I was told over and over again: ‘You are now paralyzed. Why did you do this? Why did you go to fight? This little girl needs you but now you cannot take care of her.’ But I saw it differently. This paralyzed hand of mine was the power and the courage that being a mother gave me. I have a daughter and I must go out and fight for her.”
She says that she and other protesters of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Bukan came under a barrage of bullets many times, and she always thought that a bullet might hit her in the head and end her life. “I was ready for it, even though I knew I had a daughter. It was my choice. I had thought about it many times. My decision and my goal were clear, even though it was going to cost me my life,” she asserts.
Like many other injured protesters of the Zhina Movement, Sima lives in Germany these days. She and her friend Mercedeh Shahinkar, who lost an eye during the protests, are trying to return to normal life.
They go to language classes together, study together, and take their children to a park near where they also exercise. Sima says Mercedeh massages her injured hand to alleviate the pain and be her “right hand”: “She does this in a way that would not embarrass me. This is important to me. It is valuable because it does not give me a feeling of helplessness. Mercedeh is my personal physiotherapist.”
At the same park, Mercedeh tells IranWire, “I always say that, in my own country and my own town, I was a soldier who went barehanded into the street.” Mercedeh adds while exercising, “We were at war. In a war, of course, both sides have weapons, but we do not have any. However, I never regretted it.”
“We were all fighters,” Sima says. “And I say it once again: we all came under barrages of bullets. We were quite ready and aware. Everything was for the love of liberty – something that is essential to us.”
Fighting to Live for Her Daughter
The Woman, Life, Freedom movement started after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died in the custody of the morality police. Following her death, nationwide protests began, especially in Kurdish areas of the country.
The Islamic Republic suppressed the protests violently, as it had done in the previous 40-some years of its existence.
On the morning of October 13, 2022, like every other day, Sima woke up, had breakfast, and cooked food. In the afternoon, she left home and joined the protests.
People had gathered in Bukan’s main square, known as the Governor’s Square. Ten minutes later, according to Sima, security forces surrounded the people and started shooting at them.
“They had put sharpshooters on the rooftops as well; on the roof of the hospital, on the roofs of the banks. I saw all of it,” says Sima. “I saw they were shooting at people from the rooftop of the banks. They were shooting from inside the schools as well. The school where I had studied was filled with agents. Machine guns were there, too. It was like a war, like another country had attacked.”
When the forces of the Islamic Republic started shooting at the people, Sima escaped. She was standing outside Bukan’s old hospital for around a minute when an anti-riot policeman, looking directly into the eyes of Sima, pulled the trigger, broke her arm in half, and filled it with pellets.
“At that moment, I don’t know what power kept telling me ‘Sima, escape! Sima get up and run,'” she recounts. “I held my right arm with my left hand and ran away.”
Sima fell in front of a shop. People pulled her into the building and called her family. They took her to the clinic while she was bleeding severely. “Both the car and I were soaked with blood. My close friend who was accompanying me kept saying: ‘Sima, don’t leave Zhouan alone! Don’t leave her alone! Don’t make Zhouan motherless! Hold on, Sima…’,” she narrates.
Sima did hold on. “My brush with death was very comfortable. It is not at all like what everybody is scared of. But my only worry was Zhouan. I missed her so much, as though I had not seen her at all on that day. I missed Zhouan like I had not seen her for ten years. Throughout that night, I fought to stay alive,” she says.
Loving Her Boneless Hand
On that first night, on the way to the hospital and in the hospital, when her heart was beating far below the regular rate, she could hear sounds and voices.
Instruments attached to her were sounding alarms, and “the nurses were running around, saying that ‘if it goes under 65, she would go into a coma’… In those moments, the fear that I would never see Zhouan again was excruciating. It was very difficult.”
As she recounts the nights, tears roll down Sima’s face. In front of the camera, she gazes into space as though she is reliving that night again – the night that she survived for the sake of Zhouan.
In our documentary about Sima, there is a picture of her hand when she was at the clinic, and her elbow was shattered. A warning was added because such pictures are excruciating to see, even after viewing numerous images of the Islamic Republic’s crimes against protesters.
Bukan’s Milad Hospital refused to hospitalize Sima, but one of the doctors decided to treat her. In the video, Sima can be seen on the bed with blood-soaked bandages on her right hand: “The pain had left me helpless. That night, I really wished to die. I really wanted death.”
Sima was in the hospital for 15 days and was operated on three times. Even the shortest surgery lasted eight hours. Her whole body was infected, and she had a high fever. Each time when she was taken to the operating room, she was told that they might have to cut off her hand.
While talking about this episode, Sima says: “But, with all the problems, my hand stayed there, and perhaps it can prove to be evidence of crimes committed by the Islamic Republic. Even now, more than 200 pellets remain in my hand.”
In front of the camera, Sima removes the cloth covering the deep injury to her hand. She cannot move her right hand. Traces of the stitches and the doctor’s scalpel where an elbow no longer exists are clearly visible.
There is a bag filled with metal bolts and nuts on the table. Sima picks it up and shows what is in the bag. That doctor in Iran had saved Sima’s life. In Germany, the doctors had difficulty believing what an excellent job that doctor had done.
Sima has been repeatedly told in Germany that they can replace her hand with an artificial one that might even work better than a natural one, but she has rejected these offers. While raising her right hand a little with her left hand, she says, “But this is the hand that I love so much, even with all the bleeding, pain and the loss of bones.”
The next surgery would attach the arm directly to the forearm, and it can never bend again. She says the Islamic Republic repeatedly tried to force her to promise that she would not tell the media how her hand was injured, but Sima left Iran and took with her the evidence of the crime.
She landed in Germany on September 16, 2023 – the anniversary of the start of the Zhina Movement.
Islamic Republic’s Crimes
Since migrating to Germany, Sima has had one surgery on her elbow and has several surgeries ahead of her.
At the same time, Sima, Mercedeh, and many other victims of the protest crackdown attended international forums as eyewitnesses to the Islamic Republic’s crimes.
On March 18, 2024, after the United Nations fact-finding commission presented its complete report in the presence of the Islamic Republic’s representatives, Sima testified at a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, saying, “We need your support in the face crimes committed by this regime. I am talking to you about the conduct of a government that feels no responsibility for its citizens. Standing up against the crimes of the Islamic Republic is a service to all humanity. Woman, Life, Freedom!”
Sima is confident that not only her and Zhouan but all Iranians have a bright future ahead of them – a future without the Islamic Republic, a future of respect for women, life, and freedom.
She smiles at the camera and says: “This movement is a revolution for women. Women either do not do anything or, if they do, they finish it. The Islamic Republic is doomed. This is a revolution in people’s personal lives and in their beliefs. The Islamic Republic is the loser and I am confident that it is doomed.”