The Amazing Heroic Women Political Prisoners
The organized, collective protests of leftist women political prisoners in Evin stand out. They have written letters, staged repeated protests, and participated in numerous hunger strikes. BBC (British Broadcasting Company), for their own purposes related to the larger interests of British imperialism, recently published an animation on YouTube that captures the brutal repression and righteous resistance of the women locked inside Evin’s hellish gates.
“Songs from Inside”: Voices from Evin
This powerful video from interviews of three of Evin’s women prisoners depicts the women political prisoners’ organized and defiant sit-ins against executions, featuring audio from their protests. These voices represent the selfless and fearless humanity that is needed out in the streets of Iran and globally to fight for justice and a better world.
Theocrats Take Revenge on Women and People’s Rebellion
Since the powerful 2022-23 Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) uprising, sparked by the murder in police custody of Mahsa Jina Amini for “improper” hijab, Iran’s regime is on “a horrifying surge in executions that saw Iran’s prisons transformed into sites of mass killings.” Human rights group Amnesty International documents 853 executions in 2023, while HRANA reports 811 between October 2023 and October 2024.1 This averages 2 to 3 daily executions or official state lynchings going on for two years!
On Thursday, December 5, the death sentence of 22-year-young Ali Khaleqi Farghani was carried out on his birthday in Mashhad Central Prison. According to iranwire.com, three people were executed on Monday, December 9 and also on Tuesday, December 10; eleven people were executed on Wednesday, December 11 and also on Sunday, December 15. This totals 28 people just in the span of seven days, or four per day in the first half of this month! More executions may have taken place, as many executions are not reported by Iran’s state authorities.
Amidst this executions surge, Iran’s regime is increasingly including political prisoners and women. According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI): “Since the start of 2024, Iran has executed at least 29 women. These women are often young and, like many of those executed in Iran, often members of minority communities. What stands them apart from other executed prisoners is that many of these women were victims of child marriage (and thus child rape), domestic violence, and gender-related crimes and injustices, who committed murder as the only way to escape intolerable abuse.” Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI director explained, “The Islamic Republic allows girls to be married off at 13, and does not protect them from violent and abusive husbands—and then sentences them to death after they commit desperate acts to escape the crimes committed against them.”
Significance for Our Tumultuous World
Since our campaign was launched four years ago, actions by U.S. imperialists as well as by Iran’s Islamic fundamentalists have verified our stated orientation in our Emergency Appeal that “The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran.”
This takes on heightened meaning now as the need to stand with courageous resisters against the oppressive regime(s) is all the more pronounced in our world—for all who crave liberation, especially for women, to take heed and emulate. They exemplify a spirit of not fearing the authorities but also not fearing the tide or weight of where the majority of people are at currently. Dare to struggle, dare to win. Demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! Say to the U.S government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!
Express your solidarity by endorsing and spreading the Evin prisoners’ “Call to the People” here.
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