Kylie Moore-Gilbert to speak at WIZO Gala

Kylie Moore-Gilbert has become a fierce advocate for hostages worldwide following her wrongful detention for 804 days in Tehran’s notorious Evin and Gharchak prisons.

In her memoir “The Uncaged Sky”, she shared the trauma of being held captive, including solitary confinement and psychological torture. Iranian authorities offered to free her if she agreed to act as a spy, but she refused. She was ultimately freed in November 2020 in a prisoner-swap deal.

In those dark days sentenced to 10-years on the false change of espionage, she likely could not have imagined that today she would be free living in Australia and expecting her second child. “When I was in prison, I knew that I wanted to have a family. I knew that I wanted to have children, and I was very worried that I would that decision would be taken out of my hands, because if I stayed there 10 years, I’d be too old at the time I got out. So, it was a priority for me when I came out of prison to try and start a family. I’m really lucky that that I was able to do that,” she shared.

As a research fellow at Macquarie University, Moore-Gilbert is an academic expert on wrongful detention and hostage diplomacy, she said that many are not aware that it exists and that it is increasing, “Not only are innocent citizens of largely Western democracies getting taken hostage for absolutely no reason other than their nationality or some other lever that the arresting state wants to pull, but it’s happening more and more frequently. I think it’s because of the breakdown in the rules-based order… where you’ve got states like Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela really challenging the system of international norms that has developed post World War Two.”

Moore-Gilbert co-founded the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance in 2023, along with former detainees Cheng Lei and Sean Turnell, the organisation aims to provide advice and support to the families of current Australian victims of wrongful and arbitrary detention.  She said Iran appears to have increased its wrongful detentions and hostage diplomacy in the aftermath of the 12-day war with Israel, “They have arrested several foreign citizens in very dubious circumstances who have almost certainly become hostages, including two Jewish Americans,” she remarked.

From Moore-Gilbert’s perspective the 12-Day war was successful for Israel on a strategic level in the short to medium term, but that much will depend on what happens next,“The objectives that it achieved militarily inside Iran, and the lesser-than-anticipated blowback on Israel from Iran as a result of the strikes, both point at success. But there are a lot of dangers, of course, as to what will happen in the longer term inside Iran. Will Iran rush for some kind of covert bomb?… Who knows what they will do? They seem to be becoming even more hard line… doubling down on their extreme hardline ideology, rather than easing up on it and listening to what the people of Iran are asking for, which is more moderation, not more extremism.”

Asked about whether the conflict should have resulted in regime change in Iran, Moore-Gilbert contends that regime change can only come from within Iran, “I don’t think that the Iranian people wanted Israel to affect regime change themselves… It wasn’t possible ever for Israel to force regime change in Iran from the outside, particularly not through an aerial bombardment. You need factors on the ground to dramatically shift, and it just wasn’t feasible.”

She believes that while there was support from Iranians for Israel’s attacks on the regime in the first days of the 12-day conflict, as Iranian civilians were killed and non-regime targets were hit, many wanted the war to end, “Definitely, there was hardening of sentiment against Israel as the war progressed, because once Israel moved from targeting in various surgical strikes, certain high ranking regime officials and nuclear scientists… once civilians started dying, and once targets starting to be hit further on in the war that weren’t obviously military targets or regime targets. You saw much more mixed responses… but I do think that the people of Iran broadly blame the regime for bringing this war upon them.”

Discussing the prospects of regime change in the short term, Moore-Gilbert commented, “I don’t think we’re going to see regime change, but I do think that this regime has crumbled so dramatically, and what’s happened in the 12-day War really demonstrates their weakness, their inability to protect their own population… But we’re not going to see regime change right away. They still hold all the power. They have all the guns. They have a formidable coercive apparatus. They have a formidable system of arresting, incarcerating, torturing, and executing people that they’ve been ramping up to generate fear in society and prevent people from speaking out or rising up against them.”

However, she notes that protests will likely emerge again,“It’s cyclical in Iran… We’ve seen so many waves of attempted uprisings to remove these guys from power, that it’s inevitable that another one, in perhaps the more medium term, will happen again, and when it does, I think it’s only a matter of time for this regime.”

She argues the Iranian protests against the regime in 2022 were “a huge missed opportunity” and criticised the international community’s response. “The international community should have stepped up to support the Iranian people… had they done that, rather than offering financial and economic lifelines to the regime and not actually doing much to support the people things could have been different… So, I hope that next time there is a mass uprising, things will be different outside Iran as well, and that you’ll see greater support from the international community for them to actually affect regime change from within,” she said.

Moore-Gilbert continues to speak out for hostages, including the Israeli hostages, and laments that not enough is being done to bring them home. “The politicisation of this and even the kind of almost dehumanisation of some of the hostages by certain Israeli government ministers and others, has been really shocking, especially given… we were always told that Israel had this ethos… that nobody’s left behind,” she said.  While Israel has argued that the international community should have been putting more pressure on Hamas to release the hostages.

Moore-Gilbert has also criticised feminist groups for not condemning the sexual violence perpetrated against Israelis on October 7 and hostages.
“I think it’s extremely traumatising to even think about what was done to women on October 7. Again, that should be above people’s politics, especially if you’re a feminist organisation. It shouldn’t matter what the identity or citizenship is of that woman. If she is a victim of grotesque and unimaginable sexual assault and depravity, she should be heard and her trauma should be validated, and people should speak out against that.”

On rising antisemitism, she notes that she has also been personally targeted.  “Antisemitism, it’s impossible not to be affected by it… I’ve had people who have made antisemitic remarks to me, and when I’ve challenged them on that, they’ve cut me off and unfriended me. And I think this is common for nearly everybody. Unfortunately, it’s really created this kind of schism and divided people where, frankly, we should know better. Here in Australia, we should know how to separate what is essentially a foreign conflict from our social cohesion at home. And we should also understand that Jewish people living in Australia do not represent the Israeli government,” she said.

Moore-Gilbert contributed an essay to “Ruptured: Jewish Women in Australia reflect on life post-October 7” released this month and wrote: “In the streets of my city were IRGC flags and insignia… A handful of so-called friends called to sound out where I stood on ‘the genocide.’ When I refused to throw myself headfirst into the rapidly swelling tide, rising seemingly out of nowhere at bewildering speed, I was dropped and denounced and smeared. Losing my liberty to years of psychological torture and physical abuse no longer cut it. Now it seems I was required to adopt the same psychological positions as my own captors.”

Despite these challenges, Moore-Gilbert continues to embrace life and the lessons she learnt when held in captivity, “You learn a lot of lessons when you’re in prison and you try to cling on to them when you go outside into everyday life… Some days I’m more successful at remembering those lessons… What matters in life is this family that you’re building for yourself and the connections that you make with others, and the fact that you live in this amazing, free country like Australia, and you can take advantage of those freedoms on a daily basis when so many others in the world don’t have that privilege.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is a guest speaker at the WIZO Victoria Gala on August 14, along with social media influencer and filmmaker Zach Sage Fox.

To book visit https://wizovic.org.au/gala/