Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi praised Iranian civil society on the third anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in morality police custody, saying victims' families have kept the pursuit of justice alive by turning grief into a force for change.
In an exclusive editorial for Iran International, Mohammadi said the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom which became the mantra of the protest movement ignited by her death carries forward a decades-old struggle for human rights in Iran.
"From the image of the Khavaran mother standing tall over an unmarked grave, to the embrace of Mahsa Jina Amini’s parents in a hospital corridor as they endured her final moments in pain and tears, countless scenes have been created that will remain eternal in the history of our nation’s quest for justice," Mohammadi said, referring to mass graves for dissidents executed in 1988.
"In the wasteland of injustice and oppression, justice-seeking is a lamp to light the way, a hope in the darkness of despair, and an effort to resist defeat and passivity," Mohammadi wrote.
She traced a continuous line of activism from executions since the Islamic Republic's earliest days and the so-called chain murders of intellectuals inside Iran in the nineties to student protests, the Green Movement, 2017 and 2019 demonstrations and most recently the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
"Our society, in its pursuit of justice and its struggle to expose oppression and discrimination so that history cannot erase them, stands among the greatest in the world,” Mohammadi said.
Iran’s human rights situation remains dire according to watchdogs, with widespread state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and harsh crackdowns on political activists, journalists and women’s rights defenders.
Ethnic and religious minorities face systemic discrimination, international and Iran-focused rights groups say, and the ruling system continues to suppress protests and civil society movements with imprisonment, torture and executions.
Read the full text: Focus on Society and Justice, by Narges Mohammadi