Last month Jeremy Hunt granted Nazanin diplomatic protection, the first time for the UK in living memory. Nazanin is innocent; it is unacceptable she is held as leverage. That is now the government’s official position. https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/1103784892729458689

Diplomatic protection is not, he said, a magic wand. It has legal meaning that Nazanin’s imprisonment and abuse is now formally recognised as an injustice on the UK. She should never have been in prison. After the years of euphemism and drift, it was a transformation.

There was euphoria when I got the call, but also relief and surprise. We’ve had a few false dawns these past years. But whatever other volatility – in the UK or Iran – diplomatic protection is a recognition that cannot be taken away. It puts an end to the whispers, at least for most of the internet.

Nazanin was uplifted when told on the phone. She half knew from Iranian TV – had been hugged and congratulated by her fellow prisoners. In prison protection for one always feels a broader umbrella.

The decision came following six months of trying other things: having summoned the Iranian Ambassador, having travelled to Iran to request (Gabriella drew the above picture in his honour), having lobbied at the UN in New York. Back then Jeremy Hunt had warned there would be consequences if Iran continued holding innocent people.

Nazanin is one of a number of people held as leverage with Western states. She is simply the one you see most on TV. In New York a number of prisoners’ families came together to share our experiences and discuss the protection gap facing us: http://www.trust.org/publications/i/?id=33235268-ff46-4110-9c4d-ef7e129253a6

It was a tentative opening up. Some families were very hesitant to attend, some even briefed against doing so – by lawyers, employers, governments. It can be bewildering knowing where to turn in a world of high stakes agendas, advice tends to come from those who also have other interests, families flotsam on the seas of bigger concerns.

We talked of the suspicion and isolation, of friends in Iran backing away, of the fear of doing harm, and not knowing the right thing to say. Some feared being connected, concerned their family might be at risk.  Iranian authorities encourage fear of dangerous associations, teach the dangers of solidarity.

But being in that room, seeing each other for the first time, brought a realisation in the shared patterns – Iran has a playbook: the initial terror not knowing where our family member was, the solitary confinement and threats, the hunger strikes to get medical care, the spinal problems and lumps unattended, the same envelope of depression, the bewilderment at Iranian TV’s made up smears, and our children’s questions hanging in the unsurenesses.

Learning to see ourselves in the mirror of commonalities was its own damburst – realising our own reality in each other’s, realising we were not alone. Unacknowledged abuse has a self-recriminatory quality – wondering over and over what I did to cause this? That protection gap was a gap in recognition.

Before that point it had felt too brave to call ourselves hostages, fighting the realisation. ‘Hostage’ is an emotive word, not just a legal one.  It is something no one wants to be. Most of us like to think of our story as different, take refuge in the diacritics. We hold onto the hope we are actually innocent, or want at least to be a ‘normal’ prisoner with its promise of a fixed release.

The current Iranian hostage crisis is often unrecognised – for a variety of reasons: the insistence on the veneer of legality, the reluctance to acknowledge innocence but merely charges that ‘she and her family deny’,  the ‘raising concerns’ for individualised cases, the vulnerabilities of selective silences.

This recognition gap leads to the wrong questions, to looking for the crime at the wrong end of the telescope: What was Nazanin really doing (on holiday with a 2 year old) that led her hostage takers on? For some compounded by Ministerial mistakes and subsequent muddying.

The most important thing a politician can do is see straight. All governments can have euphemistic eyes, can find reasons not to see or deflect obligations. Campaigning is the art of opening eyes. We all make a difference by what we see.  

Gabriella’s picture captured it in the way of her fairytale world – that hand reaching out, her ready to come to the ball. Seeing is enabling, that’s its magic - no longer stuck in the cinders, while TV’s pumpkin politics passes by.

We have seen since ripples of recognition as other governments have reached out to discuss diplomatic protection for their citizens, affirming these are not isolated tragedies, not individual symptoms to manage quietly, but a common problem needing a collective response.

As families, we are gradually coming together. It still takes time to trust. Learning solidarity in baby steps is learning not to rush. Fragile we all remain.

Two weeks ago we made a joint families submission to the UN, detailing the full extent of the abuse: http://en.cshr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/04/CHSR-IHRDC-UPR-submission-detention-of-foreign-and-dual-nationals.pdf  Earlier the families wrote a joint letter calling on the world to recognise – this practice has to end: https://iranhumanrights.org/2018/12/open-letter-by-six-families-of-dual-and-foreign-nationals-imprisoned-in-iran/  

In the end the recognition needs to be Iran’s. The Iranian government needs to recognise for itself - it needs to protect its citizens from use as bargaining chips. This is no way to run diplomacy. For protection from all dark habits, recognising  you have a problem is always the first step.