This is an especially urgent moment. Nahid Taghavi, Mehran Raouf and four others appeared in court on June 13. The sham trial of these courageous prisoners of conscience was postponed.* They are innocent, their only “crime” opposing the tyranny of Iran’s theocratic regime. Yet they still face the danger that illegitimate, life-threatening sentences could be imposed any day now.

Meanwhile attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh has now spent over three years in prison and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was brutally assaulted twice this past week.

In this critical situation, publishing the Emergency Appeal with its most well-known signers will make a real difference.

World-renowned Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman writes:

“Good-hearted people are constantly being bombarded with so many requests to sign petitions about important issues, that it is natural that they should feel overwhelmed, asking themselves what good will it do, wondering how one signature can possibly make a difference. If I have signed on to the Emergency Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran, it is because I know that this initiative will effectively call attention to the situation of men and women in that country who, if enough pressure is brought to bear on its leaders, could tomorrow be liberated from terrible conditions and extraordinary injustice. And even if those leaders do not listen, I am convinced – from personal experience – that the prisoners themselves are given strength to survive and persevere, they are listening. They know others, faraway, care what happens to them, and we should not let them down.”

Freeing these political prisoners would crack open a door for all of Iran’s hundreds of political prisoners, and for Iran’s 80+ million people to continue their struggle for a far better society and world.

So donate generously toward the $5,000 needed to begin an initial round of posting and advertising the Emergency Appeal in The Nation and Ms. Magazine.

Share this appeal and encourage friends, family and colleagues to contribute.

If you haven’t already, endorse the Appeal.

As Ariel Dorfman writes, these prisoners are counting on us. Let’s not let them down.

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Updates and background on Iran’s political prisoners.

Flash: the wonderful and important film NASRIN about political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh is now streaming on Hulu.

*For instance, Mehran Raoof was reportedly held in solitary confinement, a form of torture, for eight months, denied even paper and pen, and prevented from seeing an attorney. On the night before his June 13 court appearance, after being released from solitary, he had to borrow a pen from a fellow prisoner and had to hunt to find a piece of cardboard on which to write his condemnation of his treatment.

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