The important statement by 40+ political prisoners of Iran’s notorious Evin prison is a call for mass protest of the issuance of death sentences for six political prisoners, and against rampant executions overall. It was posted December 4 by several organizations, including @burnthecage. The translation from Farsi is by IEC volunteers.

Evin Prisoners’ “Call to the People”

The uprising of 2022 marked a turning point in the Iranian people’s struggle for liberation. It has shaken the foundations of the ruling government to such an extent that they have no alternative other than to intensify repression in various forms. The issuing of death sentences and carrying them out, including against political prisoners, has increased exponentially over the past two years. This is a sign of the fear and panic that exists among the political elite of Iran, due to the advances made by society in standing up and demanding its rights.

Now, a collective death sentence has been issued to six political prisoners, Abolhassan Montazer, Pouya Ghobadi, Vahid Bani Amerian, Babak Alipour, Mohammad Taghavi, and Akbar (Shahrokh) Daneshvarkar. And, just recently, a group of youth known as the Ekbatan Boys was also sentenced to death. In addition to these mass execution sentences, other imprisoned political prisoners have been handed death sentences, including Pakhshan Azizi, Varishe Moradi, Shahryar Bayat, Behrouz Ehsani, Mehdi Hasani, and Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani.

We, a group of political prisoners in Evin prison, are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty, and we support all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience who are facing execution. We believe that the struggle for liberation requires collective solidarity in defense of basic human rights, including by carrying out social resistance to the death penalty. We call on all the people of Iran from all walks of life to protest alongside the political prisoners, in any way possible, against the issuance of such inhumane and reactionary sentences.

Today is the time to form up in the streets against the executions! Today is the time to save the lives of the political prisoners! No to Execution!

The signatories¹ are from Evin’s Men’s Ward Four as well as the Women’s Ward. They include prominent voices of conscience such as Narges Mohammadi, Mohammad Habibi, Golrokh Iraee, Mehran Raouf. Two signers, Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi, are imprisoned students who issued an additional statement to students, spread on social media, that said in part, “It’s time to stop condemning the death penalty and rise up against it.”

Many are prominent activists for trade union, women’s and civil rights and in support of rights for Kurdish and religious minorities. They have supported and promoted the weekly “No to Execution Tuesday” hunger strike, that has spread to 25 prisons and is now in its 46th week.

¹ In alphabetical order: Fatemeh Ziaee Azad, Yedi Bahari, Shiva Esmaeili, Nasrollah Fallahi, Marzieh Farsi, Fouad Fathi, Elaheh Fouladi, Esmaeil Gerami, Farzad Moazami Goudarzi, Mohammad Habibi, Asadollah Hadi, Golrokh Iraee, Azar Kourvandi, Javad Manbari, Mohammad Masoud Moeini, Ali Moezzi, Narges Mohammadi, Reza Akbari Monfared, Amirhossein Moradi, Babak Moradi, Mohammad Najafi, Maryam Banou Nasiri, Tahereh Nouri, Sakineh Parvaneh, Hossein Piri, Khosrow Rahnama, Mehran Raouf, Davood Razavi, Reza Rezaei, Moloud Safaei, Zahra Safaei, Khashayar Sefidi, Maziar Seyednejad, Hossein Shahsavari, Hossein Shanbehzadeh, Forough Taghipour, Maryam Yahyawi, Ali Younesi, Mir Yousef Younesi, Sepehr Ziaei, plus others from the Evin Prison Women’s Ward whose names were not listed for their safety.

Iran’s Parliament, after months of deliberations/consultation with the Guardian Council appointed by “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, passed the “Chastity and Hijab” bill into law, to be implemented on December 13.¹ It institutionalizes and escalates the crackdown enforcing compulsory hijab (headscarf) laws which have already been rampant on the streets this year. It unleashed a societal wave of condemnation, with some activists calling it “medieval.”

Whipping, escalating fines deducted from private bank accounts, shuttered stores—even possible death sentences! In the Islamic Republic of Iran (IR), these are now official punishments for women wearing or “promoting” “improper attire.” What is improper? Clothing that “exposes areas below the neck, above the ankles, or above the wrists, or clothing that ‘tempts’ others.”

One obscurely worded clause “grants the judiciary authority to issue death sentences to individuals accused of promoting nudity, unveiling, or improper attire in collaboration with foreign entities, classifying such acts as ‘corruption on earth.’”² This could open the floodgates to charge anti-mandatory-hijab activists who have received international support, such as Narges Mohammadi, with “collaboration with foreign entities,” making them potentially subject to death sentences.

A wide variety of forces have expressed opposition for different reasons. For example, three prominent Iranian cultural institutions, the Iranian House of Cinema, House of Theater, and House of Music, issued a joint statement calling it a threat to national unity and social peace. Filmmaker Jafar Panahi and others posted a statement signed by 111 filmmakers opposing the law.

A variety of forces inside (or formerly part of) Iran’s fascist theocratic regime voiced meek opposition to the law, likely in the interests of shoring up the regime in a moment of particularly unstable regional and domestic political situation. They warn that the law risks triggering a national civil disobedience movement and a possible “domino effect.”

This takes place in a context in which the Iranian theocratic regime has been weakened by Israeli attacks on its fundamentalist Islamist allies in Palestine and Lebanon, air strikes on its supply lines, and now the advance of various reactionary forces against the also reactionary al-Assad regime in Syria, a key ally. Pro-U.S. imperialist forces are actively taking advantage of this to widen divisions among reactionaries inside and close to Iran. This further plays into the hands of the theocratic regime which paints all opposition to its rule as manipulations by the U.S., its CIA and the Israeli (vile secret police) Mossad. It can and does use all this to rile up reactionary nationalism in its social base.

In this situation, it is all the more important for people in the “belly of the beast” of the imperialist U.S., which is backing and arming Israeli genocide in the region, to take up the unique stand and demands of the IEC:

We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! We say to the U.S. government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!

Narges Mohammadi Wins 21-Day Brief Leave from Evin

We reported last week of a hunger strike by two wardmates and international outcry that demanded an urgent medical release of 2023 Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi. She was finally granted a three-week suspension of sentence for her to recover at her Tehran home from her recent surgery. The 3 weeks will be time added onto the end of her prison sentence. On December 4, she emerged from an ambulance (which she had to rent herself) hijab-free and shouting defiantly.

She spoke by phone to her children and husband (exiled in France) for the first time in three years. “The first thing she told me was that she went out without the obligatory veil and that she had only one word on her lips: ‘Woman, life, freedom,’" her son Ali said at a press conference in Paris. “The second, & most important, is that she will continue to fight tirelessly against the Islamic Republic of Iran so that gender apartheid is recognized as a universal crime throughout the world, and she will also continue to fight against the death penalty.”

“You Have Done Unpredictable, Magnificent and Unbelievable Things”

Another heartwarming message came from rapper Toomaj Salehi, conditionally released after two years and a (revoked) death sentence for his music and activism supporting the Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising in 2022. His first post after being released stated:

Today we are no longer an ordinary family, a bond between us is formed of self-sacrifice, today we are not separate trees, we are roots intertwined. For the past two years you have done for me unpredictable, magnificent and unbelievable things, I am a part of you today and for you, I thank you more than anything for allowing me to be a part of you. ~ Toomaj

FOOTNOTES

[1] Iran's Parliament Passes Strict 'Chastity and Hijab' Law, iranwire.com, December 2, 2024

[2]  https://x.com/shadisadr/status/1864948317941055845