“On Tuesday 24th of June in the morning, under tight security restrictions, we—the women of Evin—were transferred to Qarchak Prison in Varamin, while approximately three thousand male prisoners were moved to Greater Tehran Prison. Although our conditions have worsened since the transfer, we declare, in solidarity with our comrades and brothers in Greater Tehran who are also under attack and pressure, that these current circumstances will not hinder our struggle. Because we know that “this is not a path where one reaches the destination without retribution.”

From the Constitutional Revolution to the present, through wars, anti-people coups, massacres of defenseless citizens and political dissidents at the hands of authoritarian regimes over the past century—through all these ups and downs, the path of struggle has continued.

Today, we are in Qarchak Prison, facing the same conditions that thousands of women with various charges have endured and lived with for years. Women from the depths of society, whose eyes bear the silent imprints of their suffering—testimonies to the injustices they have wandered through, which we now walk this path to overcome. These are the discarded at the edge of the world—excluded from life’s equations, news reports, and media waves—whose names and stories go unmentioned in human rights reports.

What has stunned us in recent days is the brutal reality of these women’s lives: women hunched over in beds no bigger than graves, yearning for the most basic necessities of life and hygiene. Within filthy, crusted walls built from years of squalor, many of them, with not a single rial in their accounts, are forced to barter themselves to their cellmates—exploited, sexually and otherwise—for the price of a daily cigarette. They endure humiliation for a piece of bread, for a taste of what their hearts ache for. They work in the prison labor units, pushing food and garbage carts or cleaning the guards’ restrooms, not for wages, but for a few extra minutes on the phone. In the prison workshop, they are used as forced labor, sewing and stitching to earn a single pack of cigarettes by the end of the day.

Excerpts: These are the very women whom political prisoners like us are usually kept away from—except when the authorities wish to punish or exile us. And now, although we are housed separately from them in Qarchak, our suffering is not separate from theirs.

Alongside the people’s tireless struggle against dictatorship, with clear goals and firm principles, we will continue our resistance until tyranny in all its forms is overthrown. Standing beside these forgotten women—cast out from the cycle of life—with greater resolve than ever, we recommit to resistance. And to those who raise their voices for us and our dire conditions, we say even louder: what has been imposed on us today is not greater than the suffering these women have endured for years.

So, work to improve our conditions—regardless of our charges. Work to improve our conditions—those of us now in Qarchak and Greater Tehran—regardless of our gender. And know this: those who are still missing under the rubble of the attack, and those discarded by this merciless system, deserve your attention even more than we do.

Let us be one link in the long chain of struggles for equality and freedom—a struggle the people of Iran have carried forward for over a century against oppression and exploitation.”