Two daughters of British-Iranian nationals being held in Iran have come together for the first time to make a film discussing how much they want their parents back with them for Christmas.
Elika, daughter of Anoosheh Ashoori, is shown sharing her emotional pain with Gabriella, the daughter of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
In a gentle film made by Amnesty International, the two daughters, 28 years apart in age, bake cakes together, while Gabriella makes a Christmas card for Boris Johnson. They discuss the moments when they miss their parents most.
Elika admits she especially misses her father on birthdays, at Christmas and while baking cakes, while Gabriella says she most misses her mother at night times, when she “cries” because “I want her home”.
Elika contends although they have a gap in age stretching more than two generations, they share something profound in their joint sense of loss, but adds Gabriella has been through something even more daunting than her by visiting her mother inside Evin prison.
Gabriella was 22 months old at the time of her mother’s arrest in April 2016 and returned to Britain last year to be reunited with her father Richard Ratcliffe. It is the fifth Christmas Nazanin will have been detained in Iran either in prison or – as at present – on a tag at her parent’s home in Tehran.
The film was made at the Ratcliffe family home in north London and the Ashooris’ home in south London. Gabriella’s Christmas card shows a family including Boris Johnson. It bears the message: “Dear Boris Johnson, please can you bring my mummy home for Christmas. She has been good. When she comes back, I want to cuddle her first and then go to the toy shop with her. Merry Christmas to you and your family. Love Gabriella. Xxx”
Anoosheh Ashoori’s wife, Sherry, also appears in the film, where she reflects on the “horrific” nature of her husband’s three-year detention in Iran. Like Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Ashoori – who lives in the UK – was arrested in Iran while visiting a relative, his ailing elderly mother. The following year he was jailed for 10 years (with two years to run concurrently) after a grossly unfair trial that saw torture-tainted “confessions” used to convict him of “cooperating with a hostile state”.
In the Amnesty video, Sherry is shown at home phoning her husband in jail in Iran, with Anoosheh answering the call and saying “I am just missing my family. That is the only thing I can say”. Sherry describes the loss of her husband for as long as a decade “as a different level of suffering”. She is trying to escalate her husband’s case with the Foreign Office so that he is granted UK diplomatic protection in the same way as Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Ashoori has written a vivid account of his life in jail, including his efforts to educate himself, and keep fit. He has the ambition to run the London Marathon if he is released in time for his body to be capable of taking on such a task.
Richard Ratcliffe also discusses how his daughter regards the imprisonment of her mother, her wariness in trusting the promises of adults, the possible stigma and how she views a world so unfair that it keeps her mother from coming home.
