The Women Who Refused to Kneel: A Legacy of Defiance and Revolution.

Provided by The Victims’ Families for Transitional Justice.

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From the moment the Islamic Republic was born, Iranian women have waged an unrelenting fight for freedom. They have led protests, defied repressive laws, and turned prison cells into classrooms of resistance. No force, neither execution, nor torture, nor bullets, has ever been enough to silence them. They are not just fighting back. They are leading the way.

A Revolution Betrayed, A Resistance Born
The 1979 Islamic Revolution promised freedom but delivered a nightmare for women. Almost overnight, their rights were erased. Thousands were fired from their jobs, the hijab became mandatory, and their legal status crumbled—losing the right to divorce, travel, or hold high-ranking positions. But they did not surrender. Just weeks after Khomeini’s rise to power, thousands took to the streets, declaring: "We did not make a revolution to go backward!" The regime tried to silence them, but instead, they became its first and most enduring opposition.

The Women of Shahr-e No: The First Casualties
Before Khomeini even set foot in Iran, a horrifying spectacle of misogyny unfolded. On February 9, 1979, Islamic revolutionaries stormed Shahr-e No (The Red-Light District), setting fire to brothels and attacking the women. Many were raped, burned, and left to die. Months later, Pary Bolandeh, Soraya Torkeh, and Ashraf Chahar-Cheshm were executed as "corruptors on earth." But they were not criminals. They were scapegoats—sacrificed to prove the regime’s control over women’s bodies.

Farrokhroo Parsa: A Minister, A Martyr, A Message
Dr. Farrokhroo Parsa, Iran’s first female Minister of Education, was a champion of equality. She implemented school uniforms to prevent class distinctions, prohibiting both the hijab and miniskirts to create an inclusive learning environment. But for defying the clerics, she was branded "Mofsed-e-Fil-Arz" (corruptor on earth), a charge punishable by death.

In May 1980, she was dragged into a sham trial and sentenced to death. Refusing to bow, she rejected the black veil forced upon her in court and defended herself with dignity. In her final words, she wrote,

"My conscience is at peace, as I know I have not committed the crimes mentioned in the indictment. The court places a significant difference between men and women, and I hope the future will be better for women."

They took her life, but they could not kill the fire she lit, nor could they silence the movement she helped ignite.

The Blood-Soaked 1980s: When Women Faced the Firing Squads
No modern regime has executed hundreds of women solely for their political beliefs—except the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the darkest years of the 1980s, thousands of women—teachers, students, mothers—were imprisoned, tortured, and executed.

Among them was Afsaneh Afzal Nia, a young mother arrested with her seven-month-old daughter, Fatemeh, and her husband, Abbas Pishdadian.  In prison, the guards denied her the right to breastfeed her baby, hoping that the child’s desperate cries would break her spirit. They told her, "Give us names, and we’ll let you feed your baby." But Afsaneh refused. She chose resistance over betrayal. She was executed, and her husband, Abbas Pishdadian, was tortured to death. Their child was orphaned another casualty of the revolution’s bloodshed.

The 1988 Massacre: The Death Commissions
In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic carried out one of its most heinous crimes. Thousands of political prisoners—including hundreds of women—were brought before Death Commissions, where clerics decided their fate in minutes. Many had already served their sentences, some just teenagers when first arrested, but they were given a final chance: renounce their beliefs, swear loyalty to the regime, or die.

They refused.

And so, they were hanged. Their bodies were dumped in unmarked mass graves, their families never told where they were buried. The regime tried to erase them, but instead, they became legends.

Homa Darabi: The Woman Who Set Herself on Fire
In 1994, Dr. Homa Darabi, a former university professor, took her resistance to the extreme. Fired for refusing to wear the hijab and harassed relentlessly, she made a final stand.

In a crowded Tehran square, she doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire, screaming, "Death to tyranny! Long live freedom!” She burned alive before a stunned crowd, her body reduced to ash, but her defiant cry echoed far beyond Iran.



A New Form of Resistance
As the streets became too dangerous for open defiance, Iranian women changed their tactics. They refused to be pushed back into their homes. Instead, they stayed in schools and universities, entered the workforce, and occupied spaces the regime tried to deny them. They resisted by having fewer children, founding NGOs, and using education as a weapon against oppression.

One of their most powerful movements was the One Million Signatures Campaign, launched in 2006. Women activists went door to door, collecting signatures to demand equal rights in marriage, divorce, and custody. It was a revolution without guns, a movement so dangerous to the regime that many of its leaders were jailed. Yet, the fight for equality never stopped.

Shirin Alam Hooli and Zeinab Jalalian: Kurdish Women Who Would Not Break
Then came Shirin Alam Hooli, a young Kurdish woman arrested in 2008, brutally tortured for two years, and executed in 2010. In one of her final letters, she wrote, "They beat me, they hang me from the ceiling, they shock me, they pour boiling water on my wounds. But I will never beg for mercy." The regime took her life, but they could not erase her story from the collective memory of the Iranian people.

And then there is Zeinab Jalalian, who has spent over 15 years in Iranian prisons. The only female political prisoner in Iran sentenced to life imprisonment, she has endured relentless torture and deliberate medical neglect, causing her to go blind. But she remains unbreakable, refusing to sign false confessions, refusing to surrender.

The Fight Continues: The Women Sentenced to Die Today
Decades later, the Islamic Republic is still executing women. Right now, Pakhshan Azizi, Varisheh Moradi, and Sharifeh Mohammadi await execution. Their crime? Resisting oppression.

From Resistance to Global Revolution
For decades, Iranian women have faced bullets, prisons, and fire with nothing but their unbreakable will. They have been killed, raped, blinded, and buried in unmarked graves. Yet, they have never surrendered.



Today, a new generation carries their legacy—from the girls burning their hijabs in the streets to the prisoners resisting inside Evin and Qarchak prisons. The regime has spent 45 years trying to erase them, but they are still here.

In the chants of schoolgirls.
In the footsteps of protesters.
In the whispers of mothers who tell their daughters, "Never kneel."

The Islamic Republic thought it could silence them. Instead, it turned them into symbols of resistance.

Iranian women are not just fighting for themselves. They are leading a global battle against gender apartheid. Alongside Afghan women, they are pushing for gender apartheid to be recognized as an international crime. It is not enough for apartheid to be defined only by race—women, half the world’s population, deserve the same protections.

Their revolution is no longer just Iran’s revolution. It is the battle cry of every woman who has ever been told she is less, every girl who has ever been forced into silence. And one day, when this regime falls, the world will remember: It was the women who never surrendered, who fought until the very end, and who—against all odds—won.