You’re blindfolded.

There are screams from behind the doors and walls.

Closer, four men speak behind you.

They tell you they think you’re a spy.

“I’m not a spy,” you protest.

There is no bed in your cell, no pillow, only blankets on the floor.

The men’s voices tell you if you don’t confess, you could stay there for 20 years. They could even arrange the death penalty.

That is the scenario Roxana Saberi had her audience imagine yesterday.

In 2009, the veteran journalist was imprisoned in Iran for more than three months on charges of espionage for the United States. At the Mary Riepma Ross Center, she talked about her experience, what she learned and what others can learn about Iran, human rights, courage and the country’s inhabitants.

Her talk was just one program organized by the human rights and humanitarian affairs program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which has been reinvigorated by a gift from the Forsythe family.

“Basically the goal of the overall program is to examine issues of human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective,” said Brian Lepard, a law professor and co-director of the program. Saberi’s talk fit right into that goal.

“She has firsthand experience with human rights violations,” Lepard said. “But more importantly, through that experience, she learned how important advocacy is.”

The discussion of Iran comes as the Middle East region is continually embroiled in unprecedented unrest and civil protest.

“In every way, it really seems like great timing,” said Ari Kohen, professor of political science and Lepard’s co-director. “(But) I think it’d be an interesting talk at any time.”

The experience of others was the theme of Saberi’s talk.

“There are so many stories about individuals in Iran that we haven’t heard,” Saberi said in an interview before her talk.

Media coverage often focuses on Iran’s troubled relations with much of the world, which Saberi said are valid concerns, but the ordeals of the people on the ground – people like her cell mates, whose names are unknown to the outside world – aren’t heard.

“But they are people pursuing basic freedom,” Saberi said. “And they pay a great price for it. We need to speak out for those who can’t speak out.”

Saberi’s story started long before her arrest. She grew up in Fargo, N.D., with her Iranian father and Japanese mother. When she was young, Saberi found herself winning pageants, first Miss Fargo, then Miss North Dakota and then as a frontrunner for Miss America.

Her money went to her master’s degree, a program that sent her reporting in Washington, D.C., then to another master’s at Cambridge.

“During this whole time, I became more and more interested in my father’s home country, Iran,” Saberi said.

It wasn’t long before she took her reporting gig across the world. There she found an odd mix, with people hospitable and welcoming toward her, then bussed to government-sanctioned protests against the United States. Many of them didn’t take such protests seriously; some even smiled and laughed for pictures, their posters reading “Down with America.”

Saberi discovered much about her new home, especially as she worked on a book. It was a society much like any other. Hosts insisted she eat still more food. Girls in school had high hopes for their future. Wealth ranged from outright poverty to luxurious prosperity.

But other things reminded her that Iran was not North Dakota. Conversion from Islam to another religion is punishable by death. Parties with men and women dancing together, with the women letting their hair down, are illegal. A woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man’s.

Even Iran isn’t immune to change, however. A majority of college entrants are women, Saberi said. Women are firefighters, and just formed a national soccer team, though only other women are allowed to watch the athletes, who play in full hijab.

Then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran’s notoriously defiant president, and the country swerved toward the traditional hardliners. Free expression began to lose ground.

“But then I thought, maybe this is a blessing in disguise,” Saberi said.

Those thoughts were cut short one January morning, when four plainly dressed men barged into Saberi’s apartment and took her to Evin Prison, Iran’s most infamous prison. Held there are Iran’s political prisoners, journalists, activists and advocates. It is also where a Canadian journalist had mysteriously died.

“So when I was taken there by these men, I was terrified,” Saberi said.

Once she got there, it was quiet. The hall was bare. Behind the doors were other women, other prisoners.

“I was not physically tortured, but that does happen there,” Saberi said.

She eventually confessed to trumped-up crimes supported by fake evidence, with her release as the bait.

But then she met her cell mates, her “angels of Evin,” as she said.

These other women were prisoners of conscience, leaders of banned movements or religions, who refused to lie for the prize of escape. They were calm, had a sense of humor and controlled what they could: their attitude.

“This is a lesson they taught me,” Saberi said.

She recanted her confession. It was still used against her in court, and she was sentenced to eight years.

“Actually, I laughed,” Saberi said in the interview, “because I realized what a joke this whole thing was.”

By this time her story had spread around the world. Heads of state from the United States and Japan called for her release.

Her sentence was eventually overturned. It was this way that Saberi learned the power of others speaking out for those who can’t. But one emotion tempered her release: sadness.

“These people deserve freedom, too,” she said of her cell mates. Saberi couldn’t even tell an imprisoned humanitarian’s story to the international media, because Michael Jackson died. Those women are still there. So is a young blogger, who’s been sentenced to almost 20 years, and an attorney who found herself imprisoned with her defendants.

“Why should we care about the suffering of others?” Saberi asked her audience.

She gave the Daily Nebraskan the answer beforehand: “we’re all connected,” she said.

“Suffering, when it happens, spreads easily,” she told the dozens of people before her.

The stories of that suffering need to be told by others.

Saberi ended with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”