Version imprimableBy cutting off all means of communication—from the internet to text messages and phone lines—the authorities carried out a massacre in total silence. They labeled the victims “rioters” and “enemies” and opened the way for the continuation of an all-out war against the people. The wounded were abducted from hospitals; the dead were buried secretly; bodies were piled up in warehouses and stored in trailers; grieving families were sent wandering among stacks of corpses in search of their loved ones. Thousands of people—children, the elderly, and the young—were arrested. The number of enforced disappearances from these forty-seven years increased once again. Through ongoing intimidation, the state tried to silence witnesses to these crimes, including medical staff. Under conditions of suffocating repression and enforced single-voiced rule, the government recorded all of this in its own media as a triumphant spectacle.
This relentless wave of death has plunged a grieving and wounded society into such shock that it may seem as if fundamental change through the will of the people is impossible. The horrific scale of the regime’s crimes has also opened the door for exploitative powers to hide their own bloody colonial histories behind the mask of “saviors” and to take advantage of this moment of bloodshed and popular uprising.
Those who tie the dream of freedom to military intervention are, without doubt, seeking to build their vision on the ruins of this land. The inevitable fate of the people is not to choose between the ruling reactionary forces and exploitative powers and their agents. The history of uprisings, repression, and renewed uprisings has shown that the strength and will of a people crushed by corruption, discrimination, and inequality will not disappear. It will organize consciously and impose itself on those who hold power and capital. It is the people who determine their own destiny.
The Iranian Writers’ Association, which for years has stood firm—despite repression—in defense of freedom of expression without restriction or exception, and has always stood alongside freedom-seeking people, will continue with all its strength to be the voice of the oppressed and the freedom-seekers until all those who ordered and carried out these crimes are brought before a fair and public trial by the people. The Iranian Writers’ Association calls on freedom-loving writers and like-minded institutions around the world not to take their eyes off Iran for a single moment, and to be the voice of the protesters, the survivors, and the detainees.
Iranian Writers’ Association
January 27, 2026
