After 17 years of captivity, Iranian woman Bahareh Hedayat, 44, was allowed a brief release recently for cancer treatments. She was initially arrested in 2009 on charges including “interviews with foreign media,” “insulting the president,” and “disrupting public order through participating in illegal gatherings.”
“My faith in victory is stronger than ever,” Hedayat wrote on her eighth year in prison — emphasizing the Iranian people’s continued “determination to liberate and reclaim our Iran.”
The same determination was evident in Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani — two of an estimated 49 arrested protesters or prisoners of conscience executed last year in Iran.
According to Amnesty International, their trials lasted five minutes, with no chance to speak in their defense. The trial followed a two year detention without access to lawyers. Evidence to convict them came from forced “confessions” obtained from physical violence and threats of additional assault against them or their families.
“I am ready for my insignificant life to be the sacrifice for the liberation of the Iranian people,” 69-year-old Ehsani declared in a message to the Iranian people. In late 2024, Hassani, 48, likewise said he was “happy to give my life for the freedom of my homeland and the noble people of Iran.”
These are three of what the Iranian Resistance Museum estimates to be 120,000 individuals killed in pursuit of more freedom in Iran over the last 120 years. A third of those were men and women “deprived of their right to life by the Islamic Republic of Iran” in the last 47 years, according to The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.
Thousands more have been killed in recent weeks in what’s already been described — even with the emerging casualty figures — as one of the largest single crackdowns in modern Iranian history, dwarfing the death toll of previous protest movements.
It’s impossible to tell whether the latest citizen unrest will lead to any more liberty for the Iranian people. But in the face of this deep and continuing aspiration for freedom, many can see that on the horizon.
250 years of seeking liberty
Twelve years after the Declaration of Independence in America, the Qajar dynasty consolidated power in Iran, a new monarchy birthed the same year — 1789 — that monarchy was falling in France. This continued a pattern from centuries earlier of imperial rule by repeated strongmen, with the new Shah ruling through political favoritism and coercion rather than law-bound constitutional rule.
Yet a century later, decades after America’s Civil War, Iranian protests erupted against onerous concessions the nation owed to foreign powers — reflecting an underlying hunger for something more democratic.
Between 1905 and 1911, the Iranian people glimpsed a birth of their own democracy in a short-lived effort to establish a constitution and parliament in what’s called “The Iranian Constitutional Revolution.” Likewise, in 1953 following World War II, Mohammad Mosaddegh arose as a symbol to the people of elected government and national self-determination from external control.
But in both cases, this seed of democracy was never allowed to grow into a full tree, before it was plucked out from internal opponents and foreign interference (including from Europe and the U.S.) — leading to a transition to other leadership that turned out to be severely repressive.
Even more after the 1953 coup, the Shah’s monarchy concentrated all political power in what functioned like a modern police state: crushing opposition parties, jailing or executing dissidents and using oppressive surveillance and censorship.
After decades of this, many saw the 1979 Iranian Revolution as opening a new path to greater freedom, democracy and independence. But when a strongly illiberal religious faction dominated the new government, one form of repression ultimately replaced another.
In the 47 years since, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad said there have been six major citizen uprisings, each met with brutal government repression. That includes the 2009 Green Movement (approximately 70 killed), 2017 to 2018 protests (between 25 and 40 killed), 2018 to 2019 labor unrest (dozens killed), the “Bloody November” fuel protests of 2019 (an estimated 1,500 killed), and the 2022 to 2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests (with as many as 500 killed, with a documented list of 339 individuals and circumstances of their death).
In 1988 over a period of five months, thousands of political prisoners — some believe tens of thousands — were executed across 32 cities, including men, women and children.
Names of 27,196 documented “victims of state violence” since 1979 are recorded by The Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which emphasizes these men and women “were of varying social origins, nationalities, and religions; they held diverse, and often opposing, opinions and ideologies.”
What unites them, they say, “is the fact that one day each of them was unfairly and arbitrarily deprived of his or her life. At that moment, while the world watched the unspeakable happen, an individual destiny was shattered, a family was destroyed and an indescribable suffering was inflicted.”
Those who advocate for these victims also risk becoming victims themselves. A lawyer, for example, representing protesters was found dead on his office floor in December.
The Combatting Terrorism Center at Westpoint also documents 98 assassination plots from the Iranian government — with Alinejad alleging hundreds more, especially against pro-democratic Iranians who have fled the country.
Mohammad Malek, one of the early presidents of the University of Tehran, spent years in prison on three separate occasions. Several years before his death, in an open letter to the Iranian president in 2014, then-80 year-old Malek, wrote, “Over these years, I have said over and over again, I will not keep silent, give me whatever ruling you wish!”
‘Unleash these Persians’
Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a Jan. 10 statement, “Millions of people across Iran are displaying tremendous bravery in the face of decades of oppression and dictatorial rule.”
“The world is watching in awe as they lead an honorable fight for freedom, dignity and self-determination.”
American political analyst Van Jones wrote in the wake of these latest protests: “What’s happening in Iran may be the most important thing happening in the world. You’re going to unleash 90 million people who come from one of the most creative, imaginative and regal cultures in the history of the world — which could help all humanity tomorrow, instantly.”
“It’s worth the fight to get them free,” he said. “Unleash these Persians — you need a free Iranian people.
“A freed up Persian culture can be incredible for technology, can be incredible for humanity, can be incredible for the arts. It could be the end of a lot of BS in the region.”
Whenever that freedom does come — however long it takes — the courage of those who sacrificed for the cause of Iranian liberty will likely be remembered by generations.
Reza Khandan has been serving a sentence in the notorious Evin Prison for creating homemade buttons that say, “I Oppose the Mandatory Hijab.” He admitted in a written interview that separation from his teenage son and daughter, and wife is “agony” — but that his focus is on “their dreams, their future, and the future of all the children in this country.”
In a letter from prison, he wrote, “May the shadow of terror and tyranny be removed from our beloved country one day.”