Sentenced to death and denied appeal, Varisheh Moradi continues to bring inspiration and yes, joy and laughter, to Evin Prison women’s ward, as detailed in a letter from political prisoner Golrokh Iraee,^[1] posted by her supporters on her social media. In a series of three rapidly succeeding messages posted in April, Golrokh spoke poignantly on the needed direction to advance the struggle against Iran’s oppressive regime, especially against its repressive execution surge in recent years.

She writes with great insight and camaraderie about the heroic example of Varisheh Moradi, who is a Kurdish activist, of the oppressed Kurdish nation that is spread out over western Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Varisheh is sentenced to death for having gone to Syria to fight ISIS^[2] and provide care for women and children in Kurdish refugee camps.

For years, she closed the doors behind her and went off to live the watchwords she always has on her lips: “For the high-flying eagle of the skies, what is important is how to live, not how long to live.” She lived out those words in the mountains of Kurdistan on a difficult path full of ups and downs, in an unequal battle with ISIS forces who had come to revive slavery and showed no mercy even to children….With a strange calmness in the face of the death sentence, she sometimes jokes about it to lift our mood. With a laugh that deepens the dimples on her cheeks, she says: "This sentence will be executed."  And we who are angry and laugh think that what she says is not a mockery of life, but the greatness of defeating death, in the voice of a woman who brings death to its knees, by living resistance… Varisheh starts each day with the sentence that she has written on her bed in beautiful handwriting. "O life, we will either adorn you with freedom or we will not live." How beautifully she lives these poems and slogans while honoring the struggle, and never hiding behind expediency. -- Golrokh Iraee, April 2025, Evin Prison

The valor and constancy of Varisheh is sharply contrasted with those who “hide behind expediency” in another post, an urgent polemic by Golrokh shortly before the execution of political prisoner Hamid Hosseinnejad Heydaranlu.

The IRI Murder of Kurdish Kolbar Hamid Hosseinnejad

Hamid was a Kurdish kolbar, or porter, who fed his family by carrying huge burdens on his back over the precipitous mountain paths between Iranian Kurdistan and Turkey. In April 2023, Hamid was arrested on suspicion of smuggling. But suddenly the charges morphed into “Baghi”, armed rebellion and collaboration with a Kurdish party, with absolutely no proof other than a forced confession in Persian, which he does not speak, and he is illiterate. ^[3] Over and over, he insisted, “I am innocent.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is especially targeting members of oppressed nationalities in Iran for repression, including executions, particularly Kurds in western Iran, Baluchs in southeastern Iran, and immigrants (many undocumented) from Afghanistan, attempting to terrorize them into silence. At the same time, all this serves the regime’s ability to divide and conquer by drawing in ethnic Persians into toxic supremacist nationalism.

Golrokh Iraee fiercely denounced those who consider themselves “progressive” yet turn their faces away from people like Hamid.

We have become numb to execution orders. We look on. A sigh, a regret. Sometimes eyes fill with tears - but we easily make excuses to calm our conscience… we check to see whether he is a partisan or a member of some group or if he is affiliated with a particular trend, school of thought, or ideology. Or we find a photograph whose content we did not like… and heave a sigh not of sadness but of relief.

She condemned society’s indifference to recent executions, and challenged people not to be satisfied with posting on social media, but to stand up and build mass resistance in the public square, including against the horrific execution of 21 Baluch citizens in a single week.

We are oblivious to the fact that in order to abolish the death penalty, to end the cycle of systematic killing, which is one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic, we must line up outside the prison doors and shout #NoToExecution face to face with the dictator.

A third Golrokh letter dated April 19 made clear that the necessary struggle is not for a US-backed monarchist “regime change” that merely changes the faces at the top. She notes that Evin prisoners again held a ceremony in memory of political prisoners murdered 50 years ago by SAVAK, the brutal political police of the US-backed Shah.^[4]

Every year in the spring and April, the memory of these martyrs of the revolution who fell victim to SAVAK is evoked in the mind and linked to the memory of thousands of political prisoners massacred by the clerical regime in the eighties and summer of 1988. The presence of “we” together in a chain and the preservation of their names in our memory is the continuation of the path full of ups and downs that they walked and rebelled against oppression. Their path undoubtedly continues. #Neitherforgivenorforget -- A group of women in Evin

A significant section of political prisoners in Iran, among whom the women of Evin stand out, have fought to highlight this “chain” of struggle which connects the revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979 to today’s struggle against the Islamic fundamentalist regime which highjacked that revolution and instituted a fascist theocracy. This positive trend among prisoners, which is not necessarily a clearly defined or unified ideology and which includes people of differing perspectives, rejects the road of relying on sections of the reactionary regime who may break ranks to save their own necks by joining with U.S.-backed, equally reactionary forces. This is the meaning of the #Neitherforgivenorforget slogan, as well as #NeitherSheikhNorShah (where Sheikh refers to the theocratic “Supreme Leader” and Shah refers to the monarchists).

For this, many of these political prisoners have been viciously slandered and threatened, both in the official press and on the social media of pro-regime “reformists," fanatical followers of the pro-U.S. Shah’s son “Prince” Reza Pahlavi, and various rival fundamentalists.

Unite with Political Prisoners to Bring Forward a Liberating Way Out

In opposition to the righteous stance of those political prisoners described above who are struggling mightily for another way out that does not trade oppressors, there are those  in the social movements and academia, who promote the erroneous logic that because the U.S. opposes it, the IRI must be anti-imperialist, without any analysis of its actual role as a dark ages Islamic fundamentalist regime that is fully integrated into the imperialist global system, currently allied with the U.S.’s rivals, China and Russia. This leads them to gloss over the crimes of the IRI such as its executions and torture and the horrific oppression of minorities, women and LGBT people.

Some of these forces, in the face of the real need to oppose U.S. intervention and war threats against Iran, even promote “Victory to Iran.” This “Victory to Iran” can mean nothing but fortifying the torture chambers and gallows, betraying the women, the LGBT people, the artists, the striking workers, who have put their lives on the line over and over with breathtaking valor. It patronizingly dismisses as U.S. dupes all of Iran’s political dissidents, such as the millions in the Women, Life, Freedom uprising against the hated forced hijab (head-covering) that cost the life of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022.

Supporting the Islamic Republic theocracy in a narrow, pragmatic view of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is not only wrong but dangerous and ironically not only strengthens the oppressive regime in Iran but the U.S. imperialists as well. It empowers them each to point to the other as oppressors—and they are both right! But the U.S. is clearly the bigger problem in the world and in history, and especially now under a fascist Trump regime.

The prisoners themselves have set an example to follow, struggling under difficult conditions to send statements and letters like Golrokh Iraee’s, calling on the people of Iran and the world, not outmoded governments and institutions, to go to the streets, to amplify the calls to End Executions, to stand with the Women, Life, Freedom rebels.

This Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners Now has been clear on the real need to mobilize people in the US and globally to oppose US war threats and moves against Iran. As the IEC 2021 Emergency Appeal made clear:

All those who stand for justice and yearn for a better world must rally to the cause of freeing Iran’s political prisoners NOW…. 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.

Prisoners’ Hunger Strike Spreads

The program of “Victory to Iran” is all the more grotesque in the face of the prisoners-led struggle in Iran involving hundreds in 40 prisons. When the daily pre-dawn call to prayers rings out in the fascist theocracy that rules Iran, thousands of prisoners on death row and on political wards anxiously wonder: Whose neck will be broken on the gallows this morning at call to prayer? Whose widow, whose orphans will be left wailing outside these walls? Who will put themselves on the line for our lives and our dignity?

As the IRI continues to haggle with the US under severe threats of US/Israeli military attack, within its borders the regime steps up its vicious executions and prison sentences, killing 316 so far in 2025.

In contrast to that, the “No to Execution Tuesday” weekly hunger strike has expanded now to 40 prisons with the joining of a group of female prisoners in Zahedan Prison in Baluchistan and Azbaram Prison in Lahijan, continuing firm in an unbroken series of 65 weeks. About a dozen protests weekly continue to support them and shine a light on specific political prisoners and executions, protests which ranging from small vigils to consistent actions, mostly in European cities with large Iranian populations.