{"id":347801,"date":"2026-09-05T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=347801"},"modified":"2026-09-05T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T16:48:00","slug":"political-prisoners-in-iran-who-refuse-to-let-the-state-own-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/political-prisoners-in-iran-who-refuse-to-let-the-state-own-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Prisoners in Iran Who Refuse to Let the State Own the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There are moments when a prison ceases to be merely a place of confinement and becomes a contest over who possesses the future.<\/p>\n

From Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad, Ghezel Hesar, and Karaj Central Prison, Iranian political prisoners have written to mark the 61st anniversary of the founding of the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK)\u2014the organized Resistance movement to which they explicitly attach their own struggle, memory, and hopes for Iran.<\/p>\n

Their messages come from men whom the state has attempted to isolate from society. Yet almost every sentence reaches beyond the cell.<\/p>\n

National boxing champion Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani<\/a> begins with the simplest refusal: repression will not produce silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are difficult and harsh conditions for us in prison, as they are for all the people of this land, but this is no reason for us to remain silent,\u201d he writes. \u201cWe have a duty, under all circumstances, to be the voice of our oppressed people and to cry out their pain and suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may be the central sentence of all these letters.<\/p>\n

For dictatorship, prison is supposed to reverse the relationship between citizen and state. The prisoner is reduced to someone upon whom power acts. He is watched, moved, interrogated, sentenced. His world contracts.<\/p>\n

Vafaei Sani rejects that reduction. He still assigns himself a public duty: to speak, to cry out, to call beyond the walls.<\/p>\n

And the Iran to which he speaks is exhausted\u2014an Iran of shrinking household budgets and shrinking horizons, of young people confronting repression and economic insecurity, of families who have learned the geography of prisons, courtrooms, and cemeteries.<\/p>\n

Against such exhaustion, he offers an extraordinary image.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Prison and the gallows cannot silence us\u2019: Political prisoners mark PMOI\u2019s 61st anniversary https:\/\/t.co\/LiqsX1fuIO<\/a><\/p>\n

— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI\/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) September 3, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n