Testament of an Iranian Woman Living in Luxembourg

I am writing in the hope that one day, somewhere in the world, the voice of Iran will be heard.

I know that my audience – mostly born and living in Europe, miles away from the Middle East – will not feel what I say. And from the bottom of my heart, I wish you never do. I write knowing that many will not understand these events or be able to face the depth of this disaster.

The protests and the executions

I am Iranian. An Iranian woman.

In the Middle East, being a woman is not a good fate. It takes courage and fearlessness. And now, by the forces of geography and the reality of being a woman, I am writing to you from the soil of Luxembourg. A small, lovable country that did not embrace me – even rejected me. Even here, I am not free to exist.

But today, with all the pain and suffering, I am speaking as the voice of Iran – a voice that was silenced and never reached the rest of the world. Not even the government of Luxembourg heard me. We Iranians are not considered interesting or noteworthy by any nation, organization, or system. We do not scream. We do not play the victim. We do not
post pity-seeking videos of ourselves. We are simply not a nation that generates views.

On the streets of Iran, we were brave. We took our lives into our own hands. Every few years, we fought bravely in protests to demand a solution to our problems – and were silenced by police bullets.

• Attack on the Tehran University dormitories (1999)
• Iranian student protests (2003)
• Aftermath of the elections (2009)
• Iran protests (2017)
• “Girls of the Revolution Street” protests (2018)
• Bloody protests of Aban 1398 (2019)
• “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests after the killing of Mahsa Amini (2022)

And the last wave of protests, in January 2026 – just a few months ago – which left, according to estimates, over 40 000 dead, and a pain in our souls that will never go away.

They shot people. They took our daughters to detention centers and raped them. Such terrible things happened to our daughters in prisons that many committed suicide after their release. Those who survived are not really alive anymore.

Over the years, we were silenced. We were killed. We were raped and assaulted. Truly, who do you turn to when the police themselves are the killers and rapists? We were like butterflies circling the flame of Iran – and we burned in the fire of this brutal dictatorship.

In the 21st century, we are fighting one of the world’s most powerful ideologies and cults. Yes – a cult. The Islamic Republic is a political cult. For years, it presented itself in such a way that no one understood what was happening to us: the fears we lived with, the beliefs we were forced to grow up under. We were crushed by the weight of this oppressive regime’s doctrines.

In the 21st century, we are enduring months of internet blackouts. We are not even able to express our pain online. For years, different platforms have been filtered in Iran. And now that more and more news is leaking out of the Islamic Republic, they have increased restrictions even further.

Currently, hardly any Iranian has internet access, except for those affiliated with the regime. These individuals pose as representatives of the people and ordinary citizens, spreading their own news, opinions, and feelings as the voice of the Iranian people. If they were telling the truth, they would give 90 million people access, so that everyone could speak – not just a few per cent who act entirely in line with the regime’s ideology.

This regime is not our rightful government. The people and the government are two completely distinct entities. And we have been at war inside our own country for years.

We were like butterflies circling the flame of Iran – and we burned in the fire of this brutal dictatorship.

On January 8th and 9th, my people – exhausted from suffering and living in absolute poverty in one of the world’s richest countries in terms of resources, while the Islamic Republic spends its wealth supporting terrorist groups in the region, leaving its citizens without even a piece of bread – took to the streets. They marched to take back our beloved country from the Islamic Republic’s dictatorship.

But that night was not the night of freedom. In savage raids, fierce attacks and direct gunfire, tens of thousands lost their lives for the freedom of Iran. The true death toll is undoubtedly much higher. Morgues filled with the bodies of the bravest citizens.

Among them were those who, unfortunately, did not die from direct gunfire. They were taken to hospitals with severe injuries. And do you know what awaited them there? A bullet to the head. Sepah soldiers entered hospitals and shot every wounded patient. Nurses who disobeyed orders and continued to treat the wounded were arrested. Several of them were gang-raped and raped with foreign objects. Do you know how many of them are now forced to live with a colostomy bag for the rest of their lives simply for doing their duty as human beings? Another nurse had her uterus removed due to severe damage.

But there is more. One nurse was forced to sign a document stating that she had entered a “temporary marriage” with one of the Sepah agents. Her family had to pay him a large amount of money to secure her release. She was also forced to sign a statement blaming the rape and torture on “rioters”. This is a true story from Tehran’s Rajaei Hospital.

On the other side of the wall, brothers were slaughtered next to each other. A son shot next to his father. A daughter taken from her mother’s arms to torture and rape warehouses. Daughters like me – who wish they were dead rather than being gang raped by savage Sepah soldiers.

But the story does not end there.

Soldiers opened fire, and the trucks behind them collected the corpses of Iran’s children. In the days following those two nights, families went to the morgues to find the bodies of their loved ones, which were placed in black bags in the yard and warehouses around the morgue. One by one, searching, finding. A video was published of a father, in sheer desperation, calling for his son among the corpses. Another video showed a mother whose child was in the 236th bag she opened. That means this mother’s heart stopped 235 times – and at the same time, she wished that corpse was her child’s… while also wishing it wasn’t.

Daughters in this story had a little more “sin”. Even many of their corpses were raped, not handed over to families before autopsy. After all, those injuries in the lower area had to have a reason, and autopsy was a good excuse for wounds and tears. But what kind of doctor performs an autopsy like that?

And again, the story does not end here. Sepah demanded a “bullet fee” from families. To get their child’s corpse, they either had to pay money for the bullet, or accept to fill out a form declaring their child as a Basij or Sepah member – so that if one day even a fraction of a percent of the world’s population hears about this, they can say: “The dead were our soldiers, not ordinary people.”

In January 2026, protesters entered Rasht Bazaar. They had no weapons. Only screams. Security forces surrounded the bazaar from the outside. And then, they set the bazaar on fire. People were trapped between fire and bullets. If they ran toward the fire, they burned. If they ran toward the exit, they were shot. Some burned. Some were shot. Some both.

But it did not end with the massacre on the streets. After those two nights, thousands were arrested. Young people who had participated in the January protests were now being held in secret prisons. Months passed. Families did not know whether their children were alive or dead.

Then, the executions started. Amidst the looming threat of war, they accelerated.

In late February 2026, the war with America and Israel began. The world’s attention was on the bombs. But in the news blackout, the Islamic Republic was busy slaughtering political prisoners. In the first eight days of April 2026, at least 10 political prisoners were executed. Hundreds more are on death row. In secret, without informing families. Bodies are not returned. There is no last visit.

On the fortieth day after their children’s death – when we Iranians hold mourning ceremonies – they played epic songs and danced, instead of following the usual traditions. No tears were shed on the graves of our eternal martyrs. But I saw how fathers’ backs bent over their children’s gravestones. I saw what they did to us. Families were even arrested for mourning and shouting “Death to the dictator” after the ceremony. Where, truly, was justice?

Between each story, I fall into severe depression for days. This narration is so agonizing for me that I wish I was in those black bags myself. Myself in Rasht Bazaar. I feel like a traitor for not being with my people during those hard days. Even though I, too, am a victim of this same system, and my wandering and displacement are the result of similar events – but I wish I was in Iran on those two nights. I wish I was among those forty thousand, screaming “Long live Iran” and “Death to the dictator”. Even in my dreams, I am not as brave as my compatriots.

People went to the streets unarmed. They screamed with their voices. But armed agents attacked them – and called them rioters, criminals, mentally ill, terrorists. We were a loving people – we gave our lives for our land and our right to live in our own country. We tried to expose their crimes. And what happened?

The internet was cut off. For weeks, we lived in silence and without news. And those of us outside Iran didn’t know: Should we hope that the internet would come back so we could get in touch with our loved ones, or fear that if it did, we would hear the news of their deaths? My nightmare was the moment the internet reconnected – and seeing the videos I mentioned parts of.

This has become my daily torture. I feel guilty because I am alive and they are not. The fact that I escaped but left them behind with that murderous dictatorship haunts me.

The war in Iran

The cry of Iranians rose against this oppression. All over the world, we took to the streets and asked for help while Iran became a killing field for our youth. Which nation and which people are willing to have their own country attacked – in the hope that perhaps this great cancer would end and be uprooted from Iran?

War was chemotherapy for Iran. We did not choose between good and bad. We chose between bad and worse. Truly, no one wants a foreign invasion of their soil. But if every day our young people roll in blood for wanting freedom, perhaps war is the last resort. I am in pain – but I must say it: Perhaps, sometimes you must be destroyed in order to rebuild properly.

A great war has started in the Middle East – and we hope that it will mean the end of this dictatorship and the beginning of our revolution. Because we tried everything to change things from within, but against these armed savages, it is practically impossible without foreign help. We hate war. But we do not say no to war. This war might be our last hope to change this dictatorship.

It was naive of us to think that we could confront them – while this great dictator and devil did not even step down during war, bombing all its surrounding countries.

War was chemotherapy for Iran. We did not choose between good and bad. We chose between bad and worse.

Those who say no to war – after one month, how many people have been killed? The dead are mostly members and leaders of this same dictatorship. War is not without casualties, but until today, the dead are not even as many as the dead of 2 days of protests.

I am not happy about war. Every bomb feels like a knife stabbing my heart.

But in the little 20- and 30-second connections that my friends and I sometimes had with Iran, ordinary people said: “We are willing for Iran to be bombed, and for us to die too, as long as this dictatorship collapses, and in the end, the true children of Iran inherit the country.”

Iranians abroad are constantly threatened on television networks. Officials sit in front of cameras shamelessly threatening people inside and outside Iran. They tell people inside: “If you come out, your death is by your own hands.” At what point in history have officials of a country threatened their own people with death on live television?

The systemic indoctrination

They call us Iranians abroad “traitors to the homeland”. Yes – we are traitors to the homeland, because we turned to the whole world to save the oppressed people from your savage and extremist cult. They call us warmongers and hypocrites. It was you who spent years of the nation’s wealth and capital on weapons and threatening Israel and America – and shouted “Death to this” and “Death to that”.

Why did you line us up every morning in schools and tell us to scream “Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to the Jews!”? Isn’t school meant to be a place of knowledge and learning – a place to learn about love? Instead, you did everything you could to brainwash us – from kindergarten to university into the workplace.

In kindergarten, instead of poems and stories about foxes and rabbits, you told us tales about religious imams and their wars and martyrdoms. In school, instead of music, you taught us Quran and religion – preaching holy war and bloodshed. At university, you stationed guards at every entrance, ensuring that not even one centimeter of hair was visible beyond what your values allowed.

How many talented students were expelled – only to meet their grim fate under your shadow? Students who were not expelled for poor academic performance, but because they opposed your views, stood up to you, resisted your hollow beliefs. These students were the assets of the country. Our future. Our homeland.

Our brilliant engineers are forced to be taxi drivers – because in the engineers’ association, those who perform their piety get the jobs, not those who possess more knowledge.

After university, we were not safe from your cult either. To get a job, we had to go through local investigations. Investigations not based on science, but on Islam. The screening questions were always the same, designed with a single purpose: to measure our worth. And in your eyes, that worth was calculated solely by our answers to these questions: Does she wear hijab? Does she behave appropriately around the opposite sex? How much Islam does she know? How many Quranic verses can she recite? How much deference does she show toward the beliefs of your cult?

I have a friend who graduated with a 4.0 GPA. She was brilliant throughout her entire academic career. She studied mechanical engineering. She wanted to teach. But her hijab was not “proper” enough for your filthy system. What does she do now? She works in a cosmetics store. Our brilliant engineers are forced to be taxi drivers – because in the engineers’ association, those who perform their piety get the jobs, not those who possess more knowledge.

Our universities have entrance exams. The children of regime officials (Sepah), martyrs, and war veterans all benefit from quotas. Coveted seats at top universities rarely go to ordinary people because the quota holders secure their places before the exam even begins.

Our artists have resorted to opening coffee shops. Our musicians play guitar in the subway. Our chemists run online shops. Our biologists are re­duced to street vending. All because they did not accept your beliefs according to your standards.

We were never traitors to the homeland. All we asked for was a crumb of love, a piece of bread, and a safe home – nothing more. Instead, our youth grew old longing for a job, money, a normal life, and the simple ability to afford basic necessities. If we are traitors to the homeland, then it is only because, to our great misfortune, we have lost our homeland to you – the true warmongering, savage traitors.

What we lost, and who took it – before the revolution in 1979

Before the revolution, Iran was not a perfect country. No country is.

But it was a country where a girl could go to university without the consent of a man. Where a woman could walk the streets without a hijab and without the fear of being arrested. Where a student could read a book without the morality police checking its pages. Before the revolution, Iran had a booming film industry. Iranian movies competed in international festivals. Iranian singers filled stadiums. Iranian artists were not hiding in basements.

Before the revolution, the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art held one of the finest collections of Western art outside of Europe and America. A girl could look at a painting of a naked woman and not be whipped for it. Before the revolution, the economy was growing. Yes, there was corruption. Yes, there was inequality. But a factory worker could afford a home. A teacher could take a vacation. A young couple could dream of a future.

The Islamic Republic did not come to fix Iran’s problems. It came to make them permanent.

They did not build schools – they built indoctrination camps. They did not build hospitals – they built torture chambers in basements. They did not build an economy – they plundered the country’s wealth and sent it to Hezbollah, to Hamas, to the Houthis, to any terrorist group that would carry their flag.

What did we lose in 1979? We lost a country that was imperfect but progressing. We gained a regime that is perfect in only one thing: cruelty.

The Islamic Republic will end too. The question is: How many more of us will die before that day comes? And after it ends – who will rebuild? The engineers who are now taxi drivers? The doctors who are now refugees? The students who are now in mass graves?

This is what they took from us. Not just our present. Our future too. But we will build it again. We will make Iran great again.

Conclusion

I cannot say your heart will be comforted. I cannot say any of your pain will be lessened. I am just an Iranian woman in exile, with a blank page and a heart full of wounds. I know no healing. I have no comfort. All I know how to say is: I saw you.

I will not stop writing. I will not stop saying their names. I will not stop screaming into a world that does not want to hear. Because silence is what killed them. Not just the bullets, but the silence of those who saw and turned away. The silence of those who knew and said nothing. The silence of those who read and forgot.

I will not be silent.

I am one woman. One Iranian woman. In a small country that did not want me. Writing words that most people will never read. But if only one person reads this and remembers, if one person reads this and stops scrolling the next time they see news from Iran, if one person reads this and says “I saw them” – then I have done my job.

So here is my promise to you, and to the dead, and to the ones still suffering in prisons and mass graves and dark rooms: I will keep writing. I will keep saying: You were here. You screamed. You are not forgotten.

And one day – maybe not soon, but one day – the world will hear.

Until that day, I write.