First Grain of Sand — Page 57
BUILDING A REPUTATION IN PRISON 41 Golodovka is a Russian word that refers to a large movement when prisoners had grown tired of the Soviet regime's cruel treat- ment and collectively felt that their complaints were falling on deaf ears while they remained in detention without reason. The prisoners gave the commanding officer a few days' notice that soon they would halt all eating, drinking, walking, and other activities all together, and they would, instead, start to just lie on their mats like dead bodies refusing to eat. These actions were meant to demonstrate to the government that the prisoners could not tolerate the Soviet cruelties any longer and had chosen death over enslavement. Typically, when such a movement would erupt and some prisoners were on the verge of death due to starvation after up to 15 days, the commanding officers would release those prisoners out of fear. Thus, such a movement began during my time at the prison, in which the prisoners had created a long petition, and many people signed this. When they brought the petition to me for my signa- ture, I gently and respectfully picked up the Holy Quran and said that the Quran does not allow me to do something like this. As a result, I am unable to sign this petition. At the same time, I wrote a separate request in Persian to the senior leader of the prison in which I cited reasons for why I [as an Ahmadi Muslim] consider it religiously forbidden to partici- pate in such a movement that creates disturbance, social unrest, and rebellion against an administration. Addressing my captors, I wrote that I understood the underlying intention of gaining free- dom, but the method they adopt will end up killing themselves, which is not right. To achieve their goal, I wrote, they must adopt a dignified method, which is to respectfully make this case to the