“Circulating and working to publish this Emergency Appeal in Germany is an important way to put this urgent issue before the public and galvanize support for these courageous prisoners, whose only ‘crime’ was caring about others and daring to speak out,” Claren says. She launched the #FreeNahid campaign to win her mother’s release and supports freedom for all Iran’s political prisoners, including imprisoned dual-nationals.

The Appeal, launched last year in the U.S., states a “brutal campaign of arrests, torture and executions is now taking place in Iran,” warns “The lives and dignity of hundreds of political prisoners are in imminent, mortal danger,” and calls on “All those who stand for justice and yearn for a better world must rally to the cause of freeing Iran’s political prisoners NOW.”

Significantly and uniquely, especially in light of the JPCOA talks, the Appeal demands Iran free its political prisoners and the U.S. refrain from threatening or intervening in Iran, including by lifting sanctions.

This Appeal has been endorsed by well over 3,000 people from 40 countries, including Germany. Signers include former Iranian political prisoners, relatives of current prisoners, the Burn the Cage/Free the Birds movement, and prominent voices of conscience including Shirin Ebadi, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Ariel Dorfman, Jody Williams, Daniel Ellsberg, Judith Butler, and Raymond Lotta, It appeared as an ad on the back cover of the Summer 2021 issue of The New York Review of Books and has been translated into Farsi, Turkish, French, Spanish, and now German.