Women's groups and organisations in the Basque Country issued a statement to join the campaign to protest against the executions of people in Iran, mainly women activists, arrested in the context of the demonstrations for the feminicide of Jina Amini in 2022 in that country.

The statement said: "We recently received the news of the death sentences of two women in Iran as a blow: Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifah Mohammadi. Two women sentenced to death who are part of the long list of those sentenced and executed in Iran.

The two women sentenced to death are part of the long list of women sentenced and executed in Iran. This nation-state, whose misogynistic reason for being is supported by a legal and judicial system manipulated at will by a hegemonic political-clerical oligarchy, only considers the right to life and justice of those people who live and express themselves in a single way of being in the world, who communicate and relate using a single language and who practice faith under a single religious interpretation.”

The statement added: “This is how the fundamental principles of humanity are hijacked by the daily repertoire of death in the Islamic Republic of Iran: arbitrary arrests, unfair trials, restriction of the right to defense, torture practices, summary executions. We will not remain silent in the face of these facts.”

The statement continued: “Kurdish and Iranian activists tell us that there is an escalation of arbitrary arrests and death sentences in Iran in response to the “Jin Jiyan Azadi” rebellion demanding women’s freedom. This uprising began after the murder of Jina Amini in 2022, during which and until today, women activists and journalists have been the most attacked. In the first month of the uprising alone, 40 women journalists were arrested and their work equipment confiscated.

We are clearly seeing that the increase in oppression, arrests and violent attacks against journalists clearly converges with the development of sovereignist and colonial policies. In 2023 alone, 834 people were executed, including 2 children and 22 women. This reality cannot be named except as a genocidal and feminicidal policy.”

The statement said: “We cannot and will not remain silent in the face of policies that seek to silence women through terror, torture and death. We will not be silenced by the discourses of the essentialist and bipolar information matrix of the anti-imperialist environment that seeks to place us in zones of political silence and deprive us of our right to dissent and to have a critical voice.

We cannot remain silent in the face of the feminicidal practices and policies sponsored by institutions whose aim is to subjugate society as a whole through the control of our bodies and our voices. We are living in turbulent times where conflicts and wars have nothing to do with people or society. The Middle East, Kurdistan, Ukraine, Palestine... are only the scenarios where hegemonic powers move their pieces to prevail while the global liberal capitalist system is dying.”

The statement end with the support to the “demands slogan of Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifah Mohammadi,” as well as the “support and demand the freedom of the other prisoners in Iran who suffer the consequences of these misogynistic and racist practices by the judicial and political institutions, and we shout out loud:

NO TO EXECUTIONS, YES TO FREE LIFE. JIN JIYAN AZADI!”

Signatories:

STEILASEKO IDAZKARITZA FEMINISTA (Feminist Secretariat of the Steilas Education Union)

FEMINISTALDE (Feminist, anti-capitalist and internationalist collective from Bilbao)

EMAKUME INTERNAZIONALISTAK (Internationalist Women)

EMAKUME MUNDU MARTXA (World March of Women Euskal Herria)

RED DE MUJERES MIGRADAS Y RACIALIZADAS DE EUSKAL HERRIA (Network of migrated and racialized women of Euskal Herria)

EH FEMINISTAK NIKA – (Feminists for Nicaragua)

EMAKUME ASKEAK/ (Free Women)

WOMEN DEFEND ROJAVA BIZKAIA

Background

Pakhshan Azizi is a Kurdish activist, social worker and communicator from Mahabad, a graduate of Allameh Tabataba'i University in Tehran. She was arrested by the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran on 4 August 2023 and imprisoned in Ward 209 of Evin Prison. She received the news of the death sentence from the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran on 23 July 2024, accused of "armed insurrection" for her membership in the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK). From the moment of her arrest until her indictment, she was denied the right to a lawyer, visits from her family and was subjected to torture to extract forced confessions. Pashkan recently wrote a letter in which she recounts and denounces the degrading treatment, the violation of her rights and the regime's strong misogyny towards her as a woman, a Kurd and an activist.

Sharifah Mohammadi, a trade union activist from Rasht, was sentenced to death by the first branch of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court, accused of "rebellion" due to her participation in the Coordination Committee for the Formation of Trade Union Organisations and her alleged affiliation with the Komala party. The court's decision is based on articles 211 and 287 of the Islamic Penal Code, ratified in 2013. During seven months of temporary detention, she has been subjected to torture and interrogation in detention centres in several cities.