This week the International Press Institute (IPI), together with Austrian human rights film festival “this human world”, hosted a sold out screening of Jon Stewart’s debut film “Rosewater”, depicting Iran’s brutal imprisonment of acclaimed journalist Maziar Bahari.

The screening was followed by a discussion with Bahari, a London-based Iranian-Canadian journalist who spent 118 days behind bars in Iran in 2009 for his efforts documenting protests that arose amid that year’s disputed re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During the course of his captivity, Bahari was tortured and interrogated by an unnamed member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. “Rosewater” is based on Bahari’s best-selling memoir, “Then They Came for Me: a Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival”.

Following his release from prison, Bahari started “Journalism Is Not a Crime”, a campaign that documents human rights abuses related to criticism of the state and officials in Iran, raises awareness of the situation of press freedom in the country and provides legal, medical and psychological support for Iranian journalists.

Prior to the screening, Bahari spoke with IPI Contributor Rebecca Hetzer about the film, the effects of imprisonment on Iranian journalists, and the state of press freedom in Iran.

IPI: Your character in the film seems almost reluctant to cover the protests and the movement against Ahmadinejad, is that a reflection of how you felt at the time as well or was that a change made for the movie?

Bahari: It’s for the movie. My character in reality and as I explain it in the book is very different from the film. For the film – because it’s an hour and 40 minutes and it had to have a narrative arc, which is different from reality – Jon Stewart had to create a different narrative arc from the reality. As a result, my character starts a little bit weaker than I was in reality and then becomes stronger or more determined halfway through the film. It’s a watered down version of me, a version that the Western audiences can relate to in a sense. He is less Iranian than me, less informed, younger.

IPI: Could you tell me a bit more about the work of Journalism Is Not a Crime?

Bahari: Journalism Is Not a Crime came from my experience in prison. When I came out of prison I realised that there was an amazing campaign for me. Many people knew my name, many people knew about me and as a result they campaigned for me, with the help of my employer at the time, Newsweek magazine, other people that I worked with, the BBC, Channel 4, many of my colleagues and friends around the world as well as my family. I knew that 99.9 percent of my friends are not lucky enough to have a strong employer like Newsweek magazine, which at that time was owned by the Washington Post. They do not have the support.

When I came out of prison [Newsweek] provided medical help for me, psychological help for me, legal help as well. And again, most of my friends and colleagues, not only in Iran also in other parts of the world, they do not have that opportunity. So I thought it would be a good idea to have a project to help these people, first in Iran and also maybe we can expand it to other countries and help journalists in other countries with their legal needs and medical needs. So that was the basic idea. But it took me four or five years to raise enough funds to start it.

IPI: I watched the panel discussion [in which you and University of Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Feinstein spoke about his recent study addressing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)] in journalists arrested in Iran. May I ask if you experienced PTSD and, if so, how you dealt with it?

Bahari: The thing about PTSD is that there are clear clinical symptoms for PTSD and some people are clinically depressed or they have post-traumatic stress disorder. I did not have it according to Anthony Feinstein, who was on that panel. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t have any scars or I don’t have any psychological scars, or I’m not traumatised by the experience. I’m not clinically someone who has PTSD. But many of the people who have PTSD, they don’t know about it either.

What was important about Anthony Feinstein’s study was that, up to that point, we had anecdotal stories about PTSD. Like, someone like me who doesn’t know anything about behavioural science, talked about PTSD because I talked about my own experience. Or many friends and colleagues who are not behavioural scientists talked about it. But with Anthony’s study and with the facts that he found about those Iranian journalists, we saw in black and white that many of these people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. So that was a very important study and hopefully it can help us, helping those people as well.

IPI: Having seen the short clip of interviews with arrested journalists, the women journalists stressed the sexual nature of their interrogation. How does the experience of women journalists in Iran differ from their male colleagues both inside and outside of prison?

Bahari: Sex is basically used by the Islamic Republic – as many other groups all around the world [do], especially religious groups – as a weapon, mainly against women, because these groups are usually led by men; so women in Iran are victims of sexual harassment, sexual intimidation, on a daily basis. But when you go to a more confined environment, this sexual intimidation and sexual harassment intensifies, and many people, victims of psychological torture, they are tortured through sexual intimidation, sexual innuendo, sexual interrogation. My own experience was that halfway through my imprisonment, when they gave up on accusing of me of espionage because they couldn’t find any evidence and they realised that I’m not going to confess to espionage, they started to talk about my sex life.

So for someone who has lived in the West and has had a relatively open-minded approach to sex, I was not that traumatised by that line of questioning. In fact, as you see in the film, it was kind of entertaining for me as well and I managed to somehow torture my own interrogator through sexual innuendo. But imagine if someone comes from a more traditional religious family, if someone doesn’t talk about these things on a daily basis, if someone has never talked about sex openly. That can be really hard for that person. We have examples of really, really disgusting sexual interrogation by the Islamic Republic through hidden cameras that they had in the interrogation rooms. That, of course, can cause a lot of problems in the victims.

IPI: Would you say this is more intense for women journalists?

Bahari: The intensity of the interrogation depends on the interrogator and the prisoner. If there is an interrogator who is, like my interrogator, sex-obsessed and someone who loves to talk about sex, both for interrogation and entertainment at the same time – because you have to understand that these people, they don’t have any other life except for interrogating people and torturing people, so that eventually becomes a sick form of entertainment for them as well – that can become more intense. My interrogator, for whatever reason, had no idea about homosexuality. He didn’t have any kind of homoerotic desires, as far as I knew, because it did not manifest. But some people, I heard they had interrogators who touched them, even men, they had a sexual innuendo.

That’s the problem with Iran and many other countries: there is no real law when you go to the interrogation room. There are no rules and regulations. In fact, it’s the legal system that is in the hand of the interrogators. As my interrogator said, the Iranian legal system is an interrogator-based system, which means that the judges listen to the interrogators, not vice-versa, that interrogators have to be regulated by the judicial system.

IPI: In Azerbaijan, alternative news outlet Meydan TV is working in exile from Berlin to avoid the government crackdown on press freedom. Are there any Iranian news outlets based outside of Iran in order to escape the harassment of journalists?

Bahari: Many, many. Since the beginning of the revolution, even before the revolution going back to the early 20th century, Iranians have had publications in the diaspora. These days there are many of them, including some of the big brands like the BBC, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. Actually our organisation, we have Iran Wire which is a major news outlet for the Iranians inside Iran and in the diaspora.

IPI: Is it an option for journalists who were imprisoned in Iran to leave the country and work for one of these outlets?

Bahari: For some of them. But the problem is that all media outlets, all around the world, they have a limited capacity, limited budgets, so they cannot absorb all the journalists who leave Iran. So the BBC has 60 to 70 employees, Voice of America has more than 100, we have about 20 to 30 contributors. It is just impossible to absorb such a massive exodus like the Iranians had after the 2009 election. Almost 300 journalists left Iran. And they went to some countries where they were really strangers in those countries. They didn’t know the language. Some journalists went to Finland, Norway, Sweden: these are countries with different languages. For Iranians who have never been there, they don’t know the culture, it’s difficult.

IPI: Since your imprisonment, have you shifted your focus solely to Journalism Is Not a Crime or are you still working as a journalist on other projects?

Bahari: I don’t write as much as I would like to write. I wrote [“Then They Came for Me”], so that was helpful. I still try to do documentaries, but to tell you the truth it’s taking a lot of my time, the Journalism Is Not a Crime, because of the responsibility that I feel. Before going to prison, I didn’t have that responsibility. I tried to help people, but these days – because I have a higher profile than many other journalists, especially Iranian journalists, and because of the things that I can do with my name and my time and my connections – I try to use that for something productive for other people. Somehow, not because of the guilt really, but somehow because of the sense of responsibility.

I think I can be useful in terms of changing Iran and the future of Iran as well. I think if Iran has more transparency and a more liberal media landscape, if there is a free flow of information into Iran and coming from Iran, then the Iranian future is much brighter. It is just something that I feel strongly about. But as a result, I cannot do many of the other things that I like to do. But that’s okay, I mean, I may have to deal with it for the next couple of years or so and hopefully someone else can take over.

IPI: Many people were optimistic about press freedom in Iran once [Hassan] Rouhani became president in 2013, and yet there continue to be arrests. Have you seen press freedom improving at all over the past few years? Do you see it improving in the future?

Bahari: All of these developments, Rouhani’s election, the 2009 demonstrations, the 2009 suppression, they are part of this civil struggle that the Iranians have for a more democratic, freer Iran. It’s a struggle that did not start in 2009, or 1979; it goes back to at least 1905 when Iran had the constitutional revolution. I don’t think that people should be euphoric with the demonstrations in 2009 and then become depressed when there is no demonstration for three or four years, and then they think that there is a panacea for everything when Rouhani is elected, and then become depressed again. It doesn’t work that way.

These are all different steps on the way of this civil struggle for a more democratic, more liberal Iran. So I was not one of the people who was really optimistic about Rouhani’s election. Rouhani is better than Ahmadinejad. That’s a positive step. But is Rouhani Nelson Mandela? No he is not. He’s not even Winnie Mandela. He’s better than Ahmadinejad and that’s a positive step, so we have to take it.

Also, Rouhani is the President of Iran. He is not the leader of Iran. There is someone else who is the leader of Iran who was not forced out of the office during the election. I think this kind of euphoria, it’s a media phenomenon, but specifically these days it’s a 24-hour news cycle media phenomenon. People become euphoric with two girls pulling their headscarf back a little bit, and it’s “Iran has become liberal”. Then they force the veil and they say “Iran has become theocratic again.” It doesn’t work that way; these are all different steps. And also, Iranians don’t like to have an overnight solution, they like to have a gradual development, a sustainable development, because they have seen the overnight changes in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, and those are not good role models to emulate.

IPI: Under what circumstances would you return to Iran?

Bahari: There has to be some sort of legal guarantee, and there has to be some sort of real positive change in Iran. I have to have some sort of guarantee, because at the moment I have a sentence in absentia and if I go back to Iran I can be arrested. [The sentence] was 13-and-a-half years originally, but then they raised it. I think the last count was 16-and-a-half years and 74 lashes. So there has to be some sort of legal guarantee. But it’s not impossible. I was just reading today that one of the Cuban baseball players who plays major league baseball is going back to Cuba. He is someone who defected from Cuba in the early 2000s. So it’s possible.