Author: Frieda Afary

For the past month, an unprecedented development has started to take place in Iran. Thousands of women and some men have started to speak publicly on social media about their experiences of sexual harassment, abuse, assault and rape. Although in the past, some individual women and men have occasionally spoken about sexual abuse online, the current wave has lasted longer and embodies a more diverse group.

We need to explicitly state that without a fundamental transformation in labor conditions,  without ending the dehumanization of women,   without ending the Kafala system in its variety of forms,  without ending anti-Black racism, without ending  discrimination against Kurds and other oppressed minorities including sexual minorities,  and without preserving and detoxifying our environment,  we will not move forward.

During the past month,  over 20  fires and explosions have damaged a variety of sites in Iran,  ranging from the Natanz nuclear fuel production site to Parchin,  a military and weapons development base,   various power plants,  production plants,  the state television and radio station,  the Evin prison,  a medical clinic,  several markets, forests and historical sites.

Below is an article which Sara Abbas, Yasser Munif and I published on June 3 on the website of the Global Prison Abolitionist Coalition.

While the COVID-19 virus continues to prey on vulnerable lives in Iran and across the globe, the governments of the US and Iran have both turned the crisis into another episode of political rivalry and propaganda exchange between themselves, erasing the root causes of the country’s healthcare crisis and turning the lives of 80 million people into a bargaining chip for political and economic gains.