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Imminent Danger of Execution: Kurdish Woman Pakhshan Azizi
Pakhshan Azizi, sentenced to death, wrote that her crime is being Kurdish and being a woman.
Iran’s Supreme Court Branch 9, by denying her lawyer’s request for a retrial on February 6, has paved the way for this most brave and compassionate woman to be hanged at any moment.
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Pakhshan is a social worker who devoted more than ten years of her life to voluntary work serving refugee camps in Kurdish areas of Iraq and then Syria, where people suffered horrific attacks from both ISIS on one side and the Turkish government on the other. International organizations working in the area, like the Red Crescent, have sent letters verifying that her activity was voluntary social work, not militancy of any kind.
But at her family home in Iran in 2023, she was violently arrested, along with her family, and subjected to five months of solitary confinement and torture, which included numerous mock executions and being buried 10 meters underground, then dragged back out. In spite of this, she refused to confess to the lies her interrogators insisted on, that she was a member of a Kurdish opposition group with an armed wing, that she had returned to Iran during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 in order to destabilize the Islamic Republic of Iran in service of some foreign power.
In July 2024, she was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial which presented no proof whatsoever that she committed armed rebellion against the state (“Baghi”), nor of supposed membership in opposition parties with an armed wing. Her lawyer, Amir Raesian, pointed out bitingly that her spurious trial convicted her of membership in both the PJAK and Democratic parties, which are in opposition to each other: “How is it possible for her to be a member of both groups at the same time? The question of which rebel group our client was a member of for which the death sentence was issued has not been answered.” In early January 2025, the Iranian Supreme Court denied her appeal, and now has refused a request for retrial based on the blatant and well-documented injustices in the first trial. Mr. Raesian will file for a new trial, but, he said, “there is a risk of the sentence being executed at any moment.”
In her July 2024 letter from Evin Prison, Pakhshan wrote about experiencing oppression all her life, and how that has steeled her, describing herself in the third person.
[The interrogator’s] roar becomes a shout: ‘Why do you conceal the truth?!’
You have concealed the most profound social truth: the essence of womanhood, her identity, her Kurdishness, her life, and her freedom…
The first corpse she saw was Khadija, whose hands were tied and who was burned by her husband and brother. She vowed never to stop defending women’s rights. Thousands of women and children saw men beheaded before their eyes during ISIS attacks, and they were taken captive and raped. The culture of rape inflicted upon women, mothers holding their infants as their milk dried up, and barefoot children, hundreds of whom were laid chest to chest on the rocks of Shengal… Elsewhere, in Kobani and other places, dozens of women and children were burned and torn apart by Turkish airstrikes in Rojava [Kurdish region in Syria], their bodies dismembered by ISIS attacks…
All her activities and efforts have been in the aim of serving and fulfilling her historical duty towards her lived experiences and historical oppressions…
I am her. She is me. I am a mere drop in the ocean. You are the ocean. Our flow is inevitable. We are unconcealed.
Pakhshan Azizi
July 2024, Evin Prison
Don’t let this precious voice be silenced. Don’t allow the mullah regime to use their execution spree to try to cow the tens of thousands of women who threw off their compulsory hijab, and the tens of thousands of men who supported them, taking the streets heroically for five months in the Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising.
Nahid Taghavi is Free!
Repost @free.nahid
I have always believed that the day will come when I write these words: My mother is free!
After more than 4 years of political imprisonment in the Islamic Republic of Iran, I hugged my mother Nahid Taghavi at the airport yesterday. This has always been my goal. The road there was long, hard and rocky. But along the way I've met people who became friends, some even family. I've seen endless suffering, sorrow and anger, but even more resilience, fighting spirit and determination. First of all, I've learned that the road is worthwhile.
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While I am overjoyed that my mother is safe at home, I remember all those who are still trapped behind the high prison walls. For them, the road is worth going on. For Pakhshan Azizi. For Verisheh Moradi. And for all political prisoners. We are not free until everyone is free.
I thank each and every person who has requested: FREENAHID over the last 4 years. You've done it!
NAHID IS FREE.
#freepakhshanazizi #freeverishehmoradi
Repost @burnthecage:
Nahid Taghavi was arrested in October 2020 while living in Iran. The charges against her included acting against national security, propagandizing against the regime, and participating in the establishment and management of an illegal group. After seven months of solitary confinement and interrogation, the Revolutionary Court sentenced her to 10 years and eight months in prison. She endured many physical problems after she was seventy years old in prison.
After her mother was arrested, Mariam Claren made great efforts to free her mother by forming the Free.Nahid Campaign...
Happy freedom. Hoping for the release of all political prisoners in Iran
“We cannot and will not remain silent”: Sepideh Gholian
Sepideh Gholian, a courageous young journalist and leftist political prisoner held in Evin, responded to the news of Pakhshan Azizi’s death sentence confirmation with a letter posted by @burnthecage.
Her second letter of the same day was also posted on @burnthecage.
Translations to English are by IEC volunteers.
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It is a war situation. Behind the high walls and barbed wire of this front, we are women who whisper the names of the executed every day and look to the future. The death sentence of Pakhshan Azizi, a woman who once gave refuge to war-torn children, has been confirmed. From now on, our ward has a woman whose absence may at any moment turn into a bitter story and a deep wound on our, and your, conscience. Pakhshan is a symbol of love for humanity. But now she is facing a death that does not stem from justice but from hatred and revenge. The same death that the Islamic Republic, with the help of Bashar al-Assad, inflicted on thousands of innocent people in Syria, and now it has once again inflicted the same bloody scythe on the children of this land.
But this is not just the story of one person. This is the story of all of us. The story of Pakhshan is tied to the story of all of us, to the story of the expectant mothers whose children's blood is on the streets, to the story of the people for whom "life" has become a dream. The Islamic Republic wants to separate us, scatter our stories, and drive us to the corners of isolation. But we know that hope lies in the intertwining of these stories, in weaving a strong chain of pain and resistance, of tears and perseverance. We cannot and will not remain silent. If we do not raise our voices today, tomorrow it will be yet another story. We want you to strengthen this chain. Don't let the story of Pakhshan be an endless story of regret and silence. Be her voice, be her story. We must fight "death" with "life". Let's make a chain out of life, against every loop of the hangman's rope. Will you take my hand to be the next link in the chain?
Part 2
"Woman, life, freedom" is not a slogan, but an open wound; a wound that remained on the body of this land. But every time, life has grown from the heart of that wound. These three words rose from Kurdistan and reached the streets, mouths and hearts, not as words, but as heartbeats. This slogan is a roadmap to survival in a land that has made death the law.
Death thinkers want to put ropes around the throats of these three words; not only to kill two women, but to cut the roots of freedom. Varishe Moradi and Pashan Azizi, two Kurdish women, today are obvious fighters whose names are on our lips, but the shadow of execution weighs on all of us.
The commanders and agents of death have gone to the war between darkness and light. They want to bend the mountains and stop the water from flowing. Unaware that the oak roots always live beneath the soil and get strength from the blood-stained soils of this land.
They fear the voices of these women, because they know a voice that has risen from a century of oppression has been heard in the streets. They know that "Gen, Zian, Azadi" is not a slogan; it is a chain that is linked together, connecting hands to hands, and voices to voices.
Death killers try to hide their Kariya face behind fake faces. They lineup, and spray fear, to break the sound of this chain. But we know that distancing ourselves from the government is not enough. We need to turn our voices into shouts. We have to make sure everyone knows that we don't accept death.
Roots must spread to survive. Those are the arteries of this chain. This is a fight for life that has joined hands from the mountains of Kurdistan to the plains of Balochistan, from the streets of Azerbaijan to the villages of Khuzestan.
Sepideh Gholian
Evin Prison Women's Ward
22 of the month 1403
January 12, 2025
We cannot be satisfied with anything less than the downfall of the oppressor
Below is a letter posted by prisoner Golrokh Iraee on her social media platforms on January 1, 2025. Translation and bracketed additions are by IEC volunteers.
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Until a moment ago, she was by your side. You would have been drinking tea together and walking side-by-side in the dreary prison evening. Then she is gone suddenly and forever, never to return. This is the most bitter reality of prison. They come and snatch one of us, and kill her. Sometimes they return her lifeless body to her family, sometimes not.
The suffering of prison is not because of the walls or the endless futility that never loosens its grip, but from the constant dread that shadows each tedious night: that this night that may be her last, and your hands are tied. The guards will come to take her away, the doors slamming one by one, her voice growing dimmer until it is lost to you. On the last night of her life, sitting or standing, she will wait for the morning call to prayer and the sunrise that will be her sunset.
The anguish of prison is heightened and given new meaning when you see your cellmate sent to the gallows. This kind of suffering changes you, it tears open your soul and toughens you, so nothing can make you tired, nothing can slow you down. You are dissatisfied with anything less than actual liberation. You become a link what my comrades call the chain of free people, the chain forged from the resistance of friends who continued to cry out for liberation, despite the boots and blows of the dictatorships of Shah and Sheikh [the Mullahs].
From the beginning, the Islamic Republic wanted to incapacitate its opponents. It banned the activities of political parties and took over newspapers. It left society without a backbone and extinguished the pulse of its life. The path of revolution was bent toward Khavaran [hidden gravesite of thousands executed in secret in the 1980s], creating the fault-line on which we stand today.
The Struggle Continues and Resistance Becomes Life Itself
Two weeks my arrival at Qarchak Prison in 2018, Fatemeh Ghezel and Narges Tabatabaei were taken from the [women’s] ward to solitary confinement to await the execution of their death sentences. We lost two people from the ward’s group of 90. I didn’t know these two very well. They had taken Fatemeh secretly, and I arrived just as they were taking Narges [Tabatabsu]. She was crying as she comforted the children. [The prisoners affectionately call one another “the children”.]
She wanted to console the children, even as she was about to go to her death. She said she accepted the situation and was not afraid of anything. She told them not to cry when she was gone, to be happy after she left and to listen to [the music station on the] radio that evening, as though it was just another day. They took Narges away. We could hardly see the solitary confinement door through a small window. A few hours later, they were taken from solitary confinement through the back door and transferred to Gohardasht Prison in Karaj. In the morning, we were informed that they had been executed.
At that time in Gharchak Prison, the children of the ward were allowed to listen to songs on the radio for [only] one hour on weekdays. Weekends, it was one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Dancing was forbidden. But even though they called out [our] names in a commanding and threatening tone, we had broken the atmosphere and the children kept disobeying the orders of the officers. Ghezel and Narges were gone, but for a long time, we continued to relive the happy moments when we had been together. Once, later on, when one of Ghezel’s favorite songs was playing, one of the children began to dance like Ghezel. Some were crying and some wanted to continue dancing.
We are in a prison that has seen more than 20 executions. Along with the hardships of Qarchak prison that many of us have experienced, we have also shared memorable moments with many of the children have been sentenced to death, including with Samira Sabzbanha, who had the shadow of death hanging over her head and fear in her heart, but did not forget that these days spent in prison are also a part of the days our lives. So you try to live it in the best way possible.
In 2021, after about a year of being my roommate for about a year, Masoumeh Zare'i was taken to Amol Prison to be executed. They gave Masoumeh a last visit with her 17-year-old daughter a few days before the sentence was to be executed. She had not seen her daughter for about two years, and she was never going to see her again. In the last days, Masoumeh planned a party to console the children of the prison, who had been hiding their tears from her.
The women's ward of Amol prison was just two simple rooms. With the permission of the prison guard, the prisoners got one hour a day of music - happy songs that had copied onto a flash drive by the prison warden on for prisoners to play under the supervision of the prison guard.
But the day that Masoumeh met with her daughter, no one had thought to get the flash drive. After she met with her daughter, Masoumeh entered the room -- with the flash drive! It was just a few days before she was to be executed, and some of the children trying to hide their tears. But with indescribable passion, she pulled the children out of their beds. A few minutes later, everyone was in the middle of the room for a few minutes forgot everything, even their tears. Mazandarani songs [of an ethnicity native to the north of Iran, near the Caspian Sea] were playing. Masoumeh was not from the north, but she danced “Dream Mir” along with the others, saying that she had learned it from other children in prison. On that day, we had more music than usual. At the height of our grief, everyone was happy.
A few days later, in the evening, Masoumeh was taken out of the ward. We stayed up with Maria and Solmaz until morning, when she was taken to Amol Prison for to be executed. Just a short distance away from us, she was hanged in front of her daughter's eyes. From behind the walls, we could hear the screams of Masoumeh's teenage daughter, longing to pull the rope off of her mother.
Masoumeh is gone, but her steadfastness in the last days of her life was a great lesson for all of us. Though she had no hope of reprieve, after seven years of imprisonment in exile and away from her child, she started every one of her final days with a campaign [to strengthen and cheer the others. On one of her last days she shocked me by saying, “Golrokh, I am sure that I will be executed soon. Maria and Soraya are also sentenced to retribution (execution) like me. Don't let them be scared or sad after I am gone. Instead, tell them the reason I am leaving is to get a consent [decree].” Just three days later, the usual routine. [She was executed.]
This is the first time, since Shirin Alam Holi, that the Evin Women’s Ward has two inmates on death row. Pakshan Azizi and Varishe Moradi, whose sentences have been issued, and Nasima Islam Zahi, (who has one baby in prison and another child who was handed over to the family after a year and a half in welfare custody), is in danger of receiving a worrying sentence.
Pakhshan and Varisheh came to the general ward last year after months of solitary confinement. After a few days in the general population, they entered the [women’s ward] and transformed the mood of the prison. They made Kurdish headscarves for the children and held Kurdish dance classes. They celebrated the [Kurdish] holidays and talked about the resistance in the areas where struggles is the custom and ritual of its people's life. They talked about living in the mountains, and working in the refugee camps. They spoke of war-stricken children and women who had survived ISIS attacks. They spoke of the intensity of storms that blew down tens, of confrontation with the forces of ISIS of being scared to death each time. They spoke of the deaths of their comrades, which was perhaps the most bitter part of their narratives.
A few months ago, their sentences for the most severe punishment were issued. But they did not let those sentences interfere with their daily routines and their relationships with fellow prisoners. They are present in all the collective programs of our band [of activists], by their stand, and their actions, they have restored and strengthened the resistance of our little band. On the day Reza Rasai was executed, we protested together against his execution, and after that, for days on end, we chanted slogans together in the prison yard and demanding “Stop the Executions”.
Every time there was suffering, we stood hand in hand and every time there was a protest, we walked together. We spread the table together and paved the way for the campaign together.
Even in high security prisons, the repressive atmosphere can be broken. Although it is difficult, we can overcome everything that should not be, but is, and make an effort to provide everything that should be, but is not. Of course, prisoners do this in their own way, not by softening the stance against the security force
Many of us were imprisoned for months and years in different prisons in the most difficult conditions and in exile.
Zainab Jalalian has been in prison and in exile [far from her home in Kurdistan] for 17 years. For many years, it was not possible for her to have visitors due to the distance from her family. She is rarely sent for medical care, and is deprived of many of the usual prisoners’ rights.
Maryam Akbari Monfared was deported from Evin women's prison to Semnan prison about five years ago. Three months ago she was transferred to Qarchak Prison, in Varamin. At the time she was arrested 15 years ago, Maryam was put in Gohardasht Karaj and Qarchak prisons in Varamin, and from there she was transferred to Evin. Her daughters grew up while Maryam was in exile, and their memories of their mother at home are from many years ago.
Narges Mohammadi was imprisoned for many years in Farchak Zanjan prisons and in various detention centers, she was deprived of living with her children and her health was endangered in prison
In addition to being detained in punishing conditions, Athena Daemi was also imprisoned in Qarchak and Lakan Rasht prisons, and experienced imprisonment in exile.
The conditions of various prisons and detention centers are different. In Qarchak prison, the children were beaten and locked in solitary confinement for the smallest objection. The food was inadequate and of poor quality. Fruits and vegetables could not be found in sufficient quantity except at certain times. Wearing some kinds of clothing was prohibited, and there were zero amenities. But we found the ways to overcome these obstacles and to teach each other.
In Amol Prison, for punishment in the women's prison, people were handcuffed to a bar with their hands raised for hours, exposed to the cold or the hot sun. In the prisons of that, there were no proper libraries and food was a problem.
In some detention centers, television was available during limited hours, and in some places, there was nothing to pass the time except the four walls and a few blankets. Sometimes many consecutive days passed without interrogation. In some detention centers, such as “Viza” and “Shapur”, even a glass of water had to be brought from outside the cell when needed. It was in these detention centers that many were tortured and raped, and many were killed in the past. Even now dozens of people are being taken to the gallows on various charges (murder, illicit material [drugs], robbery, political, ideological, etc.) —some after enduring years in solitary confinement, some after a short period of detention.
The conditions of prisons are different. But what is important is the children's resistance, which always continues in the absence of amenities and in spite of many difficulties. When the opportunities present themselves, they use they find a way to make the best use of them. And, they have learned well that they should not give up under any circumstance.
They got used to difficult conditions in prison, and to the atmosphere of struggle. They know very well that, at the height of hardships and in an environment where suffering and sorrow fall like rain, you must look for the positive side of what is possible. The secret to standing against what looks like nothing but destruction is greater solidarity and the practice of resistance. During years of living in the environment of security prisons and in forced coexistence with the [prison administration] that rains down endless repression, I have come to believe that we cannot be satisfied with anything less than the downfall of the oppressor. What we see going on today reflects the desperation of the servants of religious and royal tyranny.
The conditions of struggle are not always the same for all of us, but the important thing is that our resistance is of the same kind…that it is like that of the ‘Golsorkhi’s * who refused to bow down to the regime’s courts, and put the defending the [interests of the] people ahead of defending themselves.
Golrokh Iraee
Evin Prison
*Khosrow Golsorkhi was a revolutionary, and communist who famously denounced the regime and upheld the peoples during his 1974 trial, before being executed by the Shah’s firing squad. He is regarded as a hero, and through the years his fierce resistance has been emulated by other revolutionaries who similarly are affectionately known as "Golsorkhis".
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