Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert: The Uncaged Sky My 804 days in an Iranian Prison

For two years and 3 months, Australian academic Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was held prisoner in Evin and Gharchak, after being arrested by Iran´s Revolutionary Guards. Convincted by a Kangaroo court for being a spy of the ´Zionist regime´ she was freed through a prisoner swap, in exchange for Guards´ people imprisoned in Thailand for plotting against Israeli interests.

Uncaged Sky, her account of 804 days spent in an Iranian prison is her story of what she went through those years, but also encounters with more or less famous political prisoners in Iran, such as Nasrin Sotoudeh - whom she taught English -, the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, or the so-called group of the ´environmentalists´: young people aiming to save the badly affected Iranian fauna and flora, sent to prison and accused of being spies. She spotted Ruhollah Zam, the French-based journalist owner of a popular Telegram group, member of a religious family who was lured and kidnapped in Iraq and further executed.

Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was initially condemned to ten years of prison. Her memoir is first and foremost a testimony of carceral literature. Although the veridicity of a memoir based purely on memories who were not written down with pen and paper may be highly problematic, the coping mechanisms with the limitations of life in prison as well as the interactions with her abusers. How one can survive in isolation, in a foreign country, with a limited language knowledge? She improved her Persian, a language that will remain, for the time being a language associated with her time in prison, used to convene her experience about those months. 

There is also another line of thought which results from the memoir: the unhappy meeting between academic research and political oppression. Academics may be suspected and doubted, some of them may play an extra-academic card, some of them may be just naive thinking that the police of mind will accept their arguments of pure academic research. Nothing is free of politics in such countries and academics may be careful to avoid getting involved in such skirmishes because their academic freedom is more important sometimes than the academic curiosity. Moore-Gilbert was lured without results more than once into becoming a spy for the Revolutionary Guards, with guaranteed participation to academic conferences, among others. She repeatedly refused.

On the other hand, I strongly believe that academics, especially those with an invested interest in contemporary politics, need to be aware of the risks involved by their research. Taking freedom abiding risks does not serve the accuracy of the research and puts the academic at risks that may pay off with the freedom of their academic critical thinking as well.