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Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi and Kurdish political prisoner Warisheh Moradi have issued messages for women on 8 March, International Women’s Day. They highlighted the defining role women play in social struggles in Iran and called for protests against the death sentences handed out to women prisoners in Iran.
Kurdish political prisoner Warisheh Moradi, who has been sentenced to death by the Iranian regime and is being held in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, released a letter on the occasion of International Women’s Day, 8 March.
Moradi sends her greetings “from behind the iron bars of the dungeon” to “all struggling and pioneering women, wherever they are in the world”. She celebrates 8 March and stresses the importance of this year’s International Women’s Day, saying, “Everywhere I look, I smell the fragrance of women’s victories and I am happy to see that the chain of women’s struggle is growing stronger every day in the 21st century. It has been said many times: the 21st century is the century of women’s freedom. And when women are liberated, society will be liberated.
In her letter, Moradi outlines how wars and crises have deepened around the world, especially in the Middle East, which she describes as part of the “Third World War”, saying, “While states were fuelling the fires of war, society was fighting for peace and democracy.” She links this popular resistance to the war to her own situation, saying that the death sentences handed down to her and other female prisoners such as Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammadi are indicative of how the Iranian regime is targeting women.
She highlights the resistance that she and her fellow prisoners are waging against imprisonment and death sentences, saying that the women have “turned the prisons into schools of thought and ideas, fortresses of resistance and struggle”. She goes on to reaffirm their resistance and the reasons for their continued struggle, saying:
How could we not defend ourselves in the face of attacks? How could we remain silent against oppression and injustice? Is it possible to see the pain in the eyes of children, women, youth and other oppressed groups and give up the struggle? Of course not! History has taught us that those who struggle recognise no difficulty. The doors of struggle are always open for anyone who believes in freedom and is willing to fly. We are the children of a history full of resistance and struggle. Our eyes look far away even in the darkest places and I believe that our horizon is still bright.
Moradi stresses the need for all women to continue their struggle for freedom. “Struggle is not limited to time and space. We must never stop until we achieve freedom and celebrate this day in a free time and place, to keep alive the memory of all lovers of freedom from past to present.” She concludes, “Long live 8 March! Long live the women’s resistance! Jin, Jiyan, Azadî! (Woman, Life, Freedom)”.
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Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, currently on temporary release for medical reasons, shared a video message on social media, congratulating all the women in the world for 8 March and remembering the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi uprisings, which erupted in Iran in 2022 after the young Kurdish woman Jina (Mahsa) Amini was killed by Iranian morality police.
Mohammadi highlights the dimensions of the Iranian regime’s oppressive policies against women, saying that women in Iran are “subjected to gender apartheid in all senses” and that the Iranian regime has “used every tool at its disposal to dominate women”. Against this oppression, women in Iran are “not merely resisting, but standing at the frontlines of resistance” and are “leading the struggle against the Islamic Republic”, according to Mohammadi.
“We are seeking democracy. We are seeking freedom and equality,” she says, going on to stress that she believes that true democracy cannot be achieved without women’s rights.
She also sends her greetings to all women prisoners resisting in Iran’s prisons, and recalls the death sentences handed out to women “in revenge for the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi movement.” In her speech, she honours Warisheh Moradi, Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammadi, saying,”Every woman has a responsibility towards these women,” and needs to protest against the death sentences handed out to them.
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