Evin Prison: Hell on earth, as seen from Google Earth

On Google Earth, it can be viewed. Evin Prison in Northern Tehran, Iran, though from an immeasurable distance and not in "real time". Its fences and front gate noticeably visible from a distant satellite.

But invisible from satellite views are the forlorn and desolate contained therein, young men and women who stand up for fundamental freedoms, who desire simply the same openness that so many of us take for granted.

Iran is a place whose government and leaders, to quote the word's of Christ in Matthew 23, "tie on heavy burdens and impose these on the shoulders of humankind while they are unwilling to budge [these loads] with a single finger." Older Mullahs and Ayatollahs, at the apex of power, with an unwillingness to listen to the voices of women burdened under headscarf’s, and women battered by laws that deny, at their heart, the very premise that men and women should be given equal opportunity and treatment.

And while there is abundant evidence of evil all over Iran, on the streets and in police stations from large cities to small towns, Evin is a huge prison that seems to be the singular symbol epitomizing Iran's oppression, the massive wave of a tsunami beside many currents of injustice.

No written words can express the deafening cadence of a scream of horror, and no blog written from the relative safety of the western world can tell the of the deep and primal fear of being interrogated, tortured and possibly raped within the deep confines of Evin Prison.

In recent days, I have wondered often about the young Iranian men and women who have been brave enough to stand up against the violation of their constitution, who have been brutally and heartbreakingly let down by a system that they didn't like to begin with, but which promised a free and fair election, even if it meant the election of a "reformist" president who had cut his teeth in the same revolution as the hardliners. For those snatched from the streets, what did they feel when they entered Evin? What did they think about when the torture began, interrogations lasting up to 15 hours, using threats and beatings to obtain a forced confession, an attempt to breach the sacredness of truth and extinguish the smoldering flame of justice?

I can only imagine the screams, tears, broken bones and broken hearts in Evin, and the cells meant for solitary confinement stuffed with 15 people.

It seems that the butchery and barbarity of the government and leaders of this land, as exemplified by Evin Prison, has became as infinite as the treacherousness of Gomorrah, as desperately heartbreaking as the gulags of the Soviet Union.

In his epic Inferno, the 14th century writer Dante depicted hell as 9 circles of suffering situated within the earth. In the 21st century, hell is perhaps a sprawling prison in northern Tehran, visible from the heavens via modern technology on Google Earth.

And lo, what about those who have died at the hands of torture in this very prison? What might they say to all of us?

“We risked our lives for the sake of change
That this system of dominance might be re-arranged
All of us chanting proudly and wearing green
From the rooftops of Tehran we were clearly seen

For this cause we have in blood paid the ultimate price
Because of those with the power to inflict staggering vice
We were students with common aspirations and dreams
Some of us were middle class, and some of us of little means

We were tortured brutally and inexpressibly at Evin
Our prayers and screams reaching the edge of heaven
Today, we rest in the finality of death
Unable to on our own to reach the fruition of our quest

Leaving behind our dear parents and friends, who are bereft
Who from the State are under incredible duress
But from a beautifully higher and magnificent place
We look down upon our compatriots, and can freedom taste

We will not rest in peace lest you, the living, stand for us
Securing the foundation of a land clearly on freedom's cusp
We are the brutally murdered young and dead
The unafraid, who were by dreams of freedom fed

No longer in flesh, wearing green, are we lead
But still, for freedom, our blood was shed
Today, our message is, let not us perish in vain
Your not gaining freedom is our greatest pain

For this is that for which we had to die
That our brothers and sisters may not continue to cry
That our counterparts, living, will not always sigh
That other parents will never have to say good bye."