“Revolution Is Inevitable,” Jailed Iranian Activist Hedayati Says

A prominent Iranian women’s rights activist has written a letter from her prison cell calling on her compatriots to unite behind principles such as democracy and freedoms, as a wave nationwide protests against the clerical regime entered its third month.

Bahareh Hedayati said that a revolution to topple the Islamic Republic is “inevitable” because this regime is "the enemy of this land, of this nation.”

Hedayati was arrested on October 11 amid a brutal state crackdown on the anti-government protests sparked by the September death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of morality police.

At least 469 people have been killed by security forces, including 63 children, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group says. More than 18,000 people have reportedly been detained, and at least 28 of them have been handed capital punishment. Iran carried out the first execution on December 8, followed by a second one four days later, triggering international condemnation.

“Getting rid of this criminal government is bound to be costly and fraught with danger. There is no other way but to pay this cost and to face up to the dangers because this [regime] is unable to recognize new social forces and to assimilate them within itself,” Hedayat said in her letter.

The activist praised the young people who are taking to the streets across Iran, saying, “This generation of protesters has not resorted to any religious or pseudo-religious concepts to tell us what it wants or does not want, and this is a great achievement.”

She called on Iranians to unite around “vital ideas such as democracy, secularism, social justice…territorial integrity and rights such as freedom of assembly to facilitate the transition from an existing corrupt situation to the next milestone.”

Hedayat has been incarcerated several times before. She is a founding member of One Million Signatures Campaign, which aimed to gather support for the elimination of laws that discriminate against women.