NEW 2023: Click to visit WOMAN LIFE FREEDOM, an extraordinary virtual exhibition of anonymous artists from all over the world in support of the Iranian people, organized and sponsored by Mozaik Philanthropy.

You can also view a video of the public street projection of the 30-artist show, Woman Life Freedom, at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, January 26-28, 2023.

March 16, 2023: “The Power of Rage: The Artist Cheryl De Ciantis Interviewed by Mahmood Karimi-Hakak,” Journal Hafteh No. 721, pp. 42-46 published in Farsi; and in English by Thinkup Editions.

WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM **زن، زندگی،** **آزادی**

October 28, 2023; 16 year old Armita Gerawand has died in hospital, in government custody.

Armita’s death was announced by the government 28 days after being confronted by Morality Police after entering a Tehran Metro car with two other girls. As reported by Farzad Seifikaran, a journalist with Zamaneh Media, a Persian-language news site based in Amsterdam, Ms. Geravand was pushed by an officer enforcing hijab, and struck her head as she fell. In hospital she was described as being in a coma; later was prounounced "brain dead." (NYT) Family and friends were forbidden to visit. It is widely believed the family were coerced into giving a public statement agreeing with the regime's version of the event, that Armita fainted and fell. According to Al-Jazeera, a report by a foreign-based rights group earlier this month said Geravand’s mother was arrested. The claim was denied by the Iranian judiciary.
Armita died October 28.

Like many women since the protests began following the death of Mahsa Amini in similar circumstances in September 2022, Armita was bare-headed when confronted by the Morality Police. A brief moratorium on the activities of the Morality Police was announced by the regime, apparently to attempt to quell protests, but resumed, with the aid of cctv cameras in public places, fines and abuse. Attempting to control the public narrative by isolating women who have been harmed, and harrassing, coercing and imprisoning relatives is a consistent pattern on the part of the regime. Iran is in effect a female apartheid state.

Little has been as yet reported about the life of Armita Gerawand, but her death is sparking renewed protests.

October 6: Narges Mohammadi is awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize

“Woman – Life – Freedom”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize 2023 to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.

This year’s peace prize also recognises the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women. The motto adopted by the demonstrators – “Woman – Life – Freedom” – suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi. (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/)

The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Narges Mohammadi

Narges Mohammadi is a woman, a human rights advocate, and a freedom fighter. Her brave struggle for freedom of expression and the right of independence has come with tremendous personal costs. Altogether, the regime in Iran has arrested her 13 times, convicted her five times, and sentenced her to a total of 31 years in prison and 154 lashes.
Narges Mohammadi is in still in prison. (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/)

Mohammadi is the author of White Torture (2020), a series of interviews with other women, describing in their own words the experience of solitary confinement, one of the key torture methods used by the regime to silence and intimidate resistors and society. The objective of this torture is to break the health and minds of prisoners of conscience. Mohammadi herself has been imprisoned on and off since 2009. Her husband and two sons fled to the safety of exile in France. Mohammadi’s children have not seen their mother in eight years.

"I am very, very proud of my mother, very happy", said her 17-year-old son, Ali Rahmani, at a Paris news conference also attended by his father and twin sister. (Agence-France Presse, October 6, 2023)

“I will not stop campaigning until human rights and justice prevail in my country.” Narges Mohammadi, 2022

“The clerical regime has sowed the wind for many years and now is reaping a whirlwind.” National Council of Resistance of Iran

October, 2022: I will be drawing courageous Iranian women in support of their heroic efforts, honoring women whose freedom has been taken for speaking truth, and those whose lives have been taken because they stood up to vicious repression. Many in my country care about them, but the names of these women do not easily arise out of the news in our troubled world. So, see their names, say their names and repeat their names to others who need to hear. In the US, we need to support Iranian women and all women everywhere, including our sisters of childbearing age in the US who are grievously endangered by the reckless and hypocritical pursuit of the dangerously narrow aims of religious fundamentalists, who are prepared to sacrifice our democracy for the sake of imposing their will on all others. President Biden has warned about the rise of fascism in the US. We need to stand in solidarity with all who fight repressive regimes.

The women I have drawn who have been murdered are surrounded by falling rose petals (and I have by no means drawn all of them; there are too many). In many cultures, roses are a traditional symbol of spiritual light and renewal, and of the fragrance of heaven, as roses tell us there is heaven on earth. Roses are an especially potent symbol in the venerable and profoundly poetic Persian civilization and culture. Each woman’s rose petals are a different color, in honor of her individuality. The backgrounds are iridescent, shining colors, meant to refer to icons. Their sanctity is not in how they conformed to rules meant to deny the variety of pleasures the world gifts to us and we gift to ourselves and beloved others, but rather, how they confirmed their unique identities in life, growing like plants in the sunlight and showing such different faces and features to the world. I hope that the families and friends of the women I have drawn might recognize a spark of the person they love, even if the likeness may be imperfect.

I have also drawn the portraits of women journalists detained for reporting on Mahsa Amini’s murder by the Morality Police, of unnamed protestors, of women’s rights activists who have had to flee their country under threat, and of women who have been imprisoned and persecuted for supposed crimes against the rules imposed on women by profoundly corrupt and cowardly men determined to hold power through savagery.

This site will be updated with new images and stories from the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran. Please scroll down to see portraits and stories.

2023: Loving Images of Resistance - The Sisterhood of Eyeless Women پیوند خواهران کور شده

2023: A new sisterhood is emerging through social media in Iran. The NCRI Women Committee and others are reporting on the fates of women protestors and resistors in Iran. In November 2022, 140 ophthalmologists in Iran wrote a letter reporting that many people treated by medical centers had been blinded in one or both eyes after being deliberately targeted by bullets and paintballs.

Here is a link to NCRI’s January 17, 2023 story, Brave Iranian women lose their eyes, but their hearts still beat for Iran.

I would call it and say, don’t look at me so unkindly; you were always full of love. No matter if it didn’t look at me, I loved it anyway.

It’s hard to bear a stranger coming and sitting in its place…

But I will get used to it because I survived, and I have to live;

Because I have a story that is still ongoing…

Because I still haven’t seen the day that I “must” see, I know it’s close. Very close.

— Ghazal Ranjkesh

**Niloufar Aghaii** is a midwife. Another of the emerging “sisterhood” of eyeless women, she was shot in the eye in October during the doctors’ protest in Tehran outside the Medical Organization building. Her public victory sign is not only another sign of protest, but of commitment, solidarity, and of hope for the future of Iran and Iran’s courageous women.

The Oslo-based monitoring group Hrana estimates that 20,000 protesters have been arrested, but some legal experts and activists suggest the number could be even higher.

**Shirin Ebadi** was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Iran. One of the first women judges in Iran, Ebadi was demoted to court clerk because women were deemed unsuitable to serve as jurists when the Islamic Republic came to power. After distributing evidence of government responsibility for the 1999 murders of dissident University of Tehran students, she was convicted of “disturbing public opinion” and imprisoned. In 2009 Ebadi went into exile in the UK, where she has continued to agitate for reform of the Iranian regime’s abuse of the human rights of women and children.

**Farzaneh Ghareh-Hassanlou** was arrested at home on November 4, 2022 together with her husband Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlou following their participation the 40th-day commemoration of the death of protestor Hadis Najafi. The Ghareh-Hassanlous have been falsely convicted of involvement in the killing of a state backed paramilitary forces member following the observance. Farzaneh was forcibly coerced into making a video accusation against her husband, who was sentenced to death. Farzaneh received a sentence of 25 years. Farzaneh attempted to recant afterward without success. The couple are well known professionally and for their for their charitable activities, and physicians around the world protested Hamid’s death sentence. In 2023 he was re-sentenced to 15 years; Farzaneh was re-sentenced to 5 years. Both have been repeatedly denied needed medical treatment. There are a number of photos of the couple circulating that given the circumstances are terribly saddening. They are clearly very affectionate toward each other. The couple has two children, a son, 20 and a daughter, 10. Their daughter witnessed her parents’ arrest.

**Nasrin Sotudeh** is a human rights lawyer. She has been imprisoned on and off since 2010 for the crime of defending human rights activists in Iran and her ability to practice law and to leave the country was suspended. She is currently on medical furlough following a hunger strike. She has remained outspoken about abuses prisoners suffer and the use of heinous judicial punishments to silence criticism of the corrupt regime. She has been recognized with numerous awards, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the EU Parliament in 2011 and in November 2022, the Robert Badinter Public Grand Prix for her condemnation of the death penalty.

“The crackdown will continue. But so too will the protests. I in no way see a return to the past, no matter the nature of the crackdown. Even if the people’s demands are not met, the reality will have shifted permanently. They will not tolerate the compulsory veil anymore.” - Nasrin Sotudeh

**Elahe Mohammadi** was arrested September 29, 2022 for reporting on the death and funeral of Mahsa Amini. In October, without evidence, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the intelligence agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard accused Mohammadi and fellow journalist Niloufar Hamedi of working with US and Western intelligence agencies in Iran to foment protest through their reporting. In November, 2022, they were accused of "colluding with the intention of acting against national security and propaganda against the state."

**Monireh Arabshahi**, mother of imprisoned activist Yasaman Aryani, was arrested when she came to inquire about her daughter’s detention in 2019 after they shared video on social media showing the two of them unveiled while distributing white flowers to riders in a women-only carriage of the Tehran metro on International Women’s Day.
On 3 August 2019, Arabshahi said in an open letter from prison: “I am actually happy that in the fifth decade of my life I have been able to pull aside the veil that for many years covered my thoughts, ideas and beliefs. And today … I feel like a free bird.”

**Yasaman Aryani** was arrested in 2018 at a street demonstration in Tehran while helping an older woman who had been knocked down by police. She was sentenced to a year in prison. On her early release she called out the hypocrisy of the regime. She was arrested again after posting a video of herself and her mother on a women-only commuter train without headscarves, speaking to the passengers about hope for women. She was charged with "inciting and facilitating corruption and prostitution" through promoting "unveiling" and is serving a 16-year prison sentence.

Co-activists Yasamin Aryani and her mother Monrieh Arabshahi were convicted of “spreading propaganda,” “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security”, and “inciting and facilitating corruption and prostitution.” They were both sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment. Arabshahi has been given medical furloughs for treatment of thyroid disease, but arbitrary restrictions have prevented her from obtaining adequate treatment for her very serious condition. In 2020, she was denied visitation rights after she refused to wear a chador, even though “normal” veiling conditions in prison have not legally required the more strict chador covering. Both Aryani and Arabshahi continue to suffer extraordinary harassments while imprisoned.

**Raheleh Amadi**, mother of Saba Kord Afshari, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “promoting corruption and prostitution through appearing without a headscarf in public.” Her mother's arrest and imprisonment on similar charges was also intended as harassment of Afshari. Both were in Evin Prison together until separated when Afshari was transferred in 2020 to Qarchak Prison.

**Saba Kord Afshari,** age 24, political prisoner, was first arrested in 2018 for participating in peaceful protest against compulsory hijab. Since then she has been recharged and resentenced for a number of "crimes" against the state. Her mother Raheleh Ahmadi has also been imprisoned. In prison both women have been been denied health care. **UPDATE February 2023**: Kord Afshari has been released from prison. Explanations for such actions are not given. We celebrate her release and demand the release of all political prisoners detained for asserting the human rights of women.

**Golrakh Ebrahimi Iraee** is a prisoner of conscience condemned for speaking out against stoning of women and state sanctioned killings. She continues to write in protest while held in Amol Prison.

Prison conditions in Iran are unspeakably vile and monstrously abusive. This is by design: guards incite inmates to physically punish and attack those who have committed “crimes against the state” such as posting images of themselves unveiled on social media as a means of protest. Health care is routinely denied. Cases of furlough from prison are used as political currency, and all convictees remain in jeopardy.

The Iranian regime announced December 3, 2020 that the Morality Police has been abolished—BUT that the judiciary will still enforce restrictions on “social behavior.” The recent announcement that the Morality Police have been called off is simply one more cynical smokescreen.

UPDATE February 2023 - Saba Kord Afshari is among 7 long-held imprisoned protestors to be released by the government. The group includes Alieh Motalebzadeh, Fariba Asadi, Parastoo Moini, Zahra Safaei, Gelareh Abbasi and Sahereh Hossein. Motalebzadeh soon posted a YouTube video of the women chanting "Woman, Life, Freedom" and "down with oppressors worldwide." While celebrating their welcome release, observers remain wary of any such actions, which are arbitrarily applied and meant to allay the world’s opprobrium, while other activists including Narges Mohammadi and the two journalists who helped expose the Amini case, Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, remain imprisoned. Agence France-Presse, February 09, 2023 4:01 PM

Elderly street protestor in Tehran, September 2022.

**Mohsen Shekari,** age 23, was executed on December 8, 2022 by order of the Iranian Republic for “waging war against god.” Shekari was an artist and educator, His family disputes the story told by the authorities of violent disruption and assault on a security member; instead asserting that his actions during the protest against the killing of Mahsa Amini were nonviolent, and that he moved a barrier to prevent more violence being committed against fellow demonstrators.

Young men are being executed following illegitimate, rigged “trials,” on the charge of “waging war against god.” This is an obscenely cynical and ridiculous charge. Its arrogance is an offense to all of humanity.

Like all those whose deaths we mourn, Mohsen Shekari’s potential and his contributions to human good have been cut short. These losses are losses to us all. This portrait is intended to honor the enormous sacrifices of men in Iran in support of their sisters, wives, mothers, daughters, friends, lovers and all fellow Iranians in the Woman Life Freedom movement.

**Hannaneh Kian,** age 23, was shot to death by security forces September 21, 2022 during a demonstration in Nowshar, Mazandaran province. Amnesty reported that two friends had said she was shot on her way home from a doctor's visit.

**Minoo Majidi,** age 62, was shot and killed by Islamic Republic forces September 20, 2022 in Kermanshah while taking part in a street demonstration protesting the death of Mahsa Amini. She is survived by her husband and three children. An extraordinary social media post of a photo of Minoo’s daughter standing at her mother’s burial, her head shaved bare and holding her shorn hair in defiant protest went viral, ratcheting the world’s attention to the protests to a a dramatically new level.

**Ghazaleh Chalabi,** age 32, was shot by security forces September 20, 2022 as she was videoing a protest in her home town of Armol. She died after five days in a coma. The *Guardian* reported that her parents of have been subjected to a sustained harassment campaign by security forces. Her last words were captured on her phone: ““Do not be afraid, do not be afraid.”Ghazaleh was an avid outdoorswoman and mountaineer.

The fearlessness of heroic Iranians is tragic, and it is an inspiration. We know so little of these young women to remember except for their convictions and courage. They fight for freedom and determination over their own bodies.

Their fight is also our fight. SAY THEIR NAMES. To my friends in the US: VOTE to stop the rising tide of savage fundamentalist racism and misogyny in this country. Insist your vote be counted and stand up against the Big Lie. Our fight is not over. It is just beginning.

**Negin Abdolmaleki,** age 21, was beaten to death during protests October 12, 2022 by security forces. Negin was a biochemical engineering student at Hamadan University of Technology.

**Mahsa Mogoi,** age 18, was shot to death while demonstrating in Isfahan.

**Azra Panahi,** age 15, died in hospital after being severely beaten by police on October 12, 2022 when she and several fellow schoolgirls at Shahed Girls High School in Ardabil, in protest to the killing Mahsa Amini, refused to participate in a forced pro-government demonstration. As with every other killing, the regime claims Azra died of natural causes, not the savagery of police violence against human rights protests in Iran.

To people of conscience everywhere: PLEASE pay attention, inform yourself, learn from the heroism of Iranian schoolgirls--and schoolboys--and the griefs of those who love them. They each have bequeathed us the direst and most valuable of gifts—that can be given only once. Let us honor them by stopping the killers.

**Yalda Moaiery**, internationally prominent photojournalist reporting on death of Mahsa Amini, was arrested September 20, 2022. She was released on bail December 20. Iranwire reported in January 2023 that according to a post on Instagram Moaiery had been sentenced to six years in prison together with community labor, was forbidden to use a cellphone or post on social media, forbidden to travel abroad and has been internally exiled away from Tehran and environs for two years. In December, 2022 Reporters Without Borders listed Iran as the world’s third biggest jailer of journalists after China and Myanmar.

**Sarina Esmailzadeh**, age 16, was beaten to death September 23, 2022 by security police in Karaj. In one of her YouTube videos, she said "Nothing feels better than freedom.” In another, she said, "We're not like the previous generation 20 years ago who didn't know what life was like outside Iran." In her final video on Telegram, she said, "My homeland feels like being in exile." Like so many other families of victims of police violence, her family was pressured to stay silent.

**Niloufar Hamedi**, journalist, reported from hospital September 16, 2022 on death of Mahsa Amini. She tweeted a photo of Amini’s parents hugging and crying in Kasra Hospital in Tehran (Wikipedia), inspiring protests against Morality Police violence. She was arrested by security forces September 21, 2022 and has been kept in solitary confinement. USCIRF reported that in October the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and the intelligence agency of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard accused Hamedi of planning to orchestrate nationwide protests with their reporting as agents of foreign intelligence agencies; and In November 2022, she was charged with "colluding with the intention of acting against national security and propaganda against the state."

We must protect the ability of journalists everywhere to do the irreplaceable job of finding facts and showing the world what it needs to see. According to a UNESCO report, over the past decade, a journalist has been killed every four days on average.

Women journalists have identified political leaders, extremist networks and partisan media as some of the biggest instigators and amplifiers of online violence against women, according to the UNESCO discussion paper The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists, 2021.

**Hadis Najafi**, age 22, was shot to death by security forces during street protests in Tehran January 21, 2022 against the murder of Mahsa Amini. Hadis was an engaging social media presence and became impassioned about the death of Mahsa Amini and the abuse of women by the regime in Iran. In a social media post recorded on her way to the street, Hadis said, "I am really hoping that in some years from now, after everything has changed, I will be happy to have been involved by taking part in this protest." She has become a symbol of the protest.

**Mahsa Amini**, 2000-2022, SAY HER NAME.

**Nika Shakarami**, age 16, was abducted by security police after leading a street protest September 20, 2022 against compulsory hijab and the murder of Mahsa Amini. Her family was informed of her death and identified her battered body ten days later. But both BBC Persian and Iran Wire reported that the authorities took possession of the body and secretly interred it in another village, to avoid a funeral that could spark a protest, and depriving her family of being able to bury their child.

Many families of murdered protestors are deprived of the ability to bury their loved ones and honor them with funerals, and family members have been threatened, coerced and in many cases tortured into testifying publicly to contrived accounts of their deaths. These accounts are often ludicrously transparent lies, and many of those coerced have tried to recant forced testimonies. They too risk their lives and further shattering of their broken families.

Hadis Najafi’s sister posted a video clip, showing Hadis’s bloodied backpack. "It was because of Mahsa Amini that she stood up tall and went out. We lost Hadis and we are not afraid of anything."

Artists, Activists and Advocates in Exile

Women and men who have spoken out against the regime have been forced into silence and many have chosen to flee the country. The Iranian diaspora that began with the resistance to the repression of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution in 1979 continues. Exiles have fled to many other countries. Some have found refuge in asylum programs designed to protect the arts from the violence of authoritarian, anti-humanist regimes. The International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) is an independent organization of cities and regions whose mission is offering shelter to writers and artists at risk, advancing freedom of expression, defending democratic values and promoting international solidarity.

Taraneh Mohammadi was born in Baneh in Kurdistan. She is a social worker and poet fluent in Kurdish, Farsi and English. Her posts and poems on social media attracted the attention of the authorities because of their focus on Kurdish rights, the rights of women and children and her condemnation of forced marriage. In January 2021 she was kidnapped from her home by intelligence agents and threatened that her tongue would be cut out if she continued to speak out (reported by the NCRI Women’s Committee).

Elahe Rahroniya is an artist, filmmaker and prolifically published poet, novelist, children’s book author, essayist and translator into English. Her work is deeply critical of the Iranian regime. After surveillance and threats she left Iran in 2010. In 2013 she was welcomed to the Stavanger, Norway ICORN City of Refuge as a Guest Writer.

Farima Habashizadehasl known by her stage name Justina, has come to international attention for her lyrics and music since launching her career in 2010. Her lyrics, openly scornful of the Iranian regime, have often provoked its ire. Following interrogation and the confiscation of her computers and mobile phones by the Iranian authorities, she fled Iran for exile in Georgia. In 2020 she became an ICORN artist in residence in Piteå, Sweden

Due to the nature of their work, writers, artists, and journalists are especially vulnerable to censorship, harassment, imprisonment and even death. Through representing the liberating gift of the human imagination, they give voice to thoughts, ideas, debate, and critique whilst disseminating it to a wide audience. Writers, artists, and journalists also tend to be the first to speak out and resist when freedom of speech is threatened. - ICORN