The Association of Free Women of Eastern Kurdistan (KJAR) released a statement calling for solidarity with its activist Warisha Moradi, who has been sentenced to death in Iran. The determination and solidarity in the fight against the regime can stop the execution machine, the umbrella organisation of the Kurdish women's movement emphasised, and explicitly welcomed the efforts of people around the world who are speaking up for Moradi.

“Every action for our friend is to be appreciated. Because human solidarity should remind us of the importance of acting together when faced with problems. The fight against the death penalty in Iran and beyond is a common fight. Therefore, we call on activists and struggling women worldwide to stand by Warisha and her resistance for the liberation of women and to prevent the regime from achieving its goals,” said the KJAR.

On Sunday, it was announced that Warisha Moradi had been sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in Tehran for ‘armed rebellion against the state’. The sentence is related to Moradi's advocacy of women's political and feminist issues as part of her membership of the KJAR, which is prosecuted by Iran's regime judiciary as a ‘separatist terrorist organisation’.

Moradi, who is currently being held in the women's wing of Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, was abducted by the Iranian intelligence service near Sine (Sanandaj), the city of her birth in eastern Kurdistan, and initially held for weeks in a local ‘detention centre’. According to human rights organisations, she was severely tortured both by the Ministry of Intelligence in Sine and in Evin Prison, both physically and psychologically, in order to force her to make a confession on camera. She is denied access to a lawyer most of the time, as well as contact with her family members.

“The patriarchal and misogynist regime has resorted to its full range of cruelties to break Warisha Moradi. Because these measures were ineffective against her desire and that of all women for freedom, she has now been sentenced to death,” said KJAR.

The KJAR said that the death sentence is an act of revenge by the regime on the ‘Jin Jiyan Azadî’ revolution, of which Moradi is considered to be a pioneer. The uprising that ignited in September 2022, following the murder of the young Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini by the Iranian forces, has resulted in a liberation movement and triggered the greatest crisis of legitimacy that the regime has experienced in its 45-year history. But instead of recognising the suffering of the various groups affected by discrimination and oppression, ending the suppression of fundamental rights and freedoms and tackling the crises that Iran has long been facing – inflation, growing poverty and skyrocketing prices that hit women even harder – those who long for a life of dignity are being fought, ‘with the utmost radicalism and brutality,’ the KJAR emphasised.

“The death sentence against Warisha Moradi, with which the regime has driven another nail into the coffin of its own system, is a clear indication that Tehran will stick to its inhuman and misogynistic course. There will be resistance against this. We strongly condemn this decision. Warisha Moradi and also Pakhshan Azizi, as well as all other fighting women, are the torches of freedom for the peoples of Iran. They are symbols of the struggle for “Jin Jiyan Azadî” (Woman, Life, Freedom), to whom the sensitivity and solidarity of all people, and especially women, who long for freedom, should be directed,” KJAR stated.