Rubin: Unsung heroes who risked everything

By Trudy Rubin

In this Christmas season, I want to pay tribute to two unsung heroes who stood up to repressive regimes - and paid with their lives.

One was Iranian, one Russian, and I doubt you've heard of either. Yet they represent many other lonely heroes around the globe who have held on to their values in the face of government repression, even though they knew it might cost them their freedom - or their very existence. We should honor those who died in solitude and pain for upholding universal principles of human rights.

One such hero was Ramin Pourandarjani, a 26-year-old doctor who was working at Iran's infamous Kahrizak detention facility as part of his military service. Kahrizak held many of the 4,000 demonstrators arrested for protesting Iran's rigged June presidential elections. The prison became so notorious for beatings, torture, rapes and killings of detainees that the regime had to close it.

Those who spoke out about the torture at Kahrizak were themselves threatened. The truth embarrassed an Iranian regime whose leaders present themselves as arbiters of global “justice.”

Pourandarjani had seen the badly beaten son of a prominent conservative political figure, and, after the youth died, was forced to list the cause of death as “meningitis.” The young doctor chose to expose the situation by speaking to a parliamentary committee.

When the doctor's body was found on Nov. 10 at Kahrizak, Iranian officials first claimed that he'd been in a car crash, then said he'd had a heart attack, and then insisted he'd killed himself. Now there are reports that he was poisoned.

Another hero was a 37-year-old Russian tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. He'd been in prison for nearly a year before he died, awaiting trial on trumped-up tax-evasion charges. His real offense, it appears, was helping to uncover evidence that implicated Interior Ministry officials in the embezzlement of more than $230 million from the state.

When Magnitsky became deathly ill and was in excruciating pain, prison officials denied him treatment and kept making conditions worse for him in an effort to force him to incriminate a client. They failed. Magnitsky kept pages of meticulous notes about hellish prison conditions.

After Magnitsky's death, his notes reached the Russian media and caused a stir - perhaps because they provided evidence that the practices of the Soviet gulag continue. But this man died alone and in pain, as have many murdered Russian journalists and human-rights workers whose killers remain uncaught by an indifferent or complicit government.

These two men are heroes for us all.

n Comments: trubin@phillynews.com