Protests in the streets of Tehran and in towns scattered across Iran may have quieted for now, after a deadly state assault that likely claimed more than 6,000 lives. But for weeks, Iranians had taken to the streets, even amid an imposed internet blackout that aimed to isolate them from each other and the world. Their galvanizing calls for change nevertheless reach the rest of the world with astonishing clarity.
Yet some of Iran’s most essential voices — its writers, who’ve long been heroic fighters for human rights and democracy — are missing in this historic moment. The regime’s familiar playbook of cracking down on writers to silence dissent and crush intellectual resistance came into sharp view once again on the night of Jan. 24, when security forces violently arrested the Iranian writer, poet, and translator Ali Asadollahi at his home. His arrest on unknown charges was another assault on free expression by a regime that has silenced many other writers and journalists. This is not an accident.
In the weeks leading to the protests that started on Dec. 28, the regime had done what it so often does when it is feeling vulnerable — targeted writers for arrest and harassment as part of a broader crackdown on free expression in the wake of its June war with Israel that included U.S. attacks on its nuclear facilities. In November, the regime detained six writers, translators, and scholars, their books and papers confiscated. Though later released, they still face charges and have been unable to resume their work.
Arrests at a Memorial Service
Weeks later, an untold number of writers, journalists, and human rights defenders were arrested at a memorial service for murdered human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi in the city of Mashhad. And this month, according to the Iranian Writers Association (IWA), as a group of writers gathered graveside to remember poet, filmmaker, and IWA board member Baktash Abtin, who died in custody in 2022, they were harassed and two were arrested. Writers both inside and outside of the country have reported to us that they are receiving threats to themselves or to their families if they wrote or spoke out in support of the current protests.
Among those arrested at the December memorial service was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Narges Mohammadi, who is emblematic of the enduring role of writers in Iran. Winner of the 2023 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write award for imprisoned writers, Narges has used her voice to bind her personal sacrifice to Iranians’ collective struggle for democracy and freedom. She has spent more than a decade of her life in prison, separated from her husband and children. Just over a year ago, in December 2024, she was granted a temporary medical release. Despite the constant threat of being re-arrested, she immediately resumed her outspoken advocacy and stayed in Iran to keep up the fight. She has been a ceaseless, fearless voice capable of uniting people behind calls for equal rights, justice, and democracy. For that, the regime has returned her to prison.
Writers have traditionally played an important role in Iran’s fight for democracy. For decades, the Iranian Writers Association has served as one of Iran’s most enduring independent civic institutions, opposing state censorship and insisting on the right of writers to speak outside the control of the state. Their members have long been harassed, imprisoned, and killed for insisting on freedom of expression.
Iranian writers have helped keep a shared human rights and democratic vocabulary alive –naming injustice when others cannot, preserving memory, culture, and history when the state demands amnesia, and articulating visions of dignity and freedom. From poetry, essays, and books to open letters, songs, and underground publications, Iranian writers have often been among the first to register the moments when cracks appear and among the last to abandon hope, using language as their form of nonviolent resistance.
Yet today, Narges’s voice is missing, along with those of many other writers and dissidents. Since her re-arrest — during and after which she was physically assaulted to such an extent as to require trips to an emergency room — Narges has been held incommunicado. Given the almost complete internet blackout, it is hard to know how many other writers and activists may have been arrested in the past week.
Narges’ Message in a Call
We cannot be entirely certain what Narges would have been saying as tens of thousands of protesters raised their voices in the streets, some shot by state security forces or threatened with execution. But we know what she has stood for and what she told us on a private call not long after her medical release from prison in December 2024. Narges made it clear that whenever we forget about a political prisoner in Iran, the regime wins. But when civil society can be the voice of those prisoners, then their cause is not forgotten. She committed herself to being that voice for as long as Iranians were not free.
Narges has articulated that Iran must be a democracy and a place where women have equal rights, and that this must come through the actions of the Iranian people. On that call a year ago, she made clear that she was not afraid to return to prison, and that she knew the road to change would not be easy. But she emphasized that all Iranians who dream of democracy and human rights have a historical task to work together.
The Iranian government can put Narges in solitary confinement, they can maim and even kill thousands, shut down the internet, and arrest dissidents under the cover of digital darkness, but the collective voices of those calling for freedom will not be silenced.
FEATURED IMAGE: Narges Mohammadi stands in her apartment in Tehran, Iran, on December 18, 2024. She was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy for women’s rights and freedom and was out of jail for 21 days on leave. (Photo by NOOSHIN JAFARI/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
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