“Mahsa Amini is one among countless victims of the Islamic Republic’s war on women…. The government is responsible for her death and decades of women being harassed, detained and otherwise harmed under the guise of this discriminatory, inhuman law” said Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Human Rights in Iran.
The resistance to this forced hijab rule and the theocratic Islamic Republic’s war on women has resulted in scores and scores of women being arrested then tormented and tortured as political prisoners in the dungeons of Iran’s theocracy established in 1979. (See “Iran’s Women Imprisoned and Tortured for Resisting Forced Hijab—Free Them Now!,” August 15, 2022.)
Included in this flesh-eating and soul-crushing war on women are escalated attacks on LGBT people. This includes the horrific death sentence recently given to LGBT activists and lesbians Zahra Sediqi and Elham Chubdar.
The poem below, by the prominent Kurdish poet and a secretary of the Iranian Writers Association Seyed Ali Salehi, is written to mourn Mahsa but expresses so much more about Iran as we fight to free all its political prisoners, and stand with the heroic resisters in and outside its prison walls.
Mourning the Death of Mahsa Amini
by Seyed Ali Salehi (unofficial translation by IEC volunteers):
Oh my dear, my dear
I will cut off my braids to mourn you!
We have crawled down to the shadows,
thrown down our shields
and grown old.
On this endless abyss
One by one
We have fallen
into the hell of anxiety!
The pain
No, it’s beyond pain
This world, with no mercy
has blinded our eyes.
And we
One by one
have fallen to our death
into the terrifying depths of our fear!
I will show you the document of this repression:
smell it...
the poisonous rains of this land!
The world
smells like the burning braids of Sepideh and Mahsa...!
No, not even the pure seven waters of Zamzam*
could wash up the filthy hands of this monster!
From now on, wherever you see a girl's grave,
Bury me too, right there
It is time to give our condolences
to the living of this land.