The entertainment world opposes the Iranian regime. It has been four months since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl who was arrested and then brutally murdered in Tehran by the vice police last September 16 for not properly covering her head and hair with her hijab, and the tide of international outrage shows no sign of stopping. . Against a growing number of celebrities expressing their support for the cause of the Iranian people against the theocratic regime of Ayatollah Khamenei.. From Tehran to Karaj, from Najafabad to Bandar Anzali, arrests and deportations in the country’s horrendous prisons continue unabated, conditions already denounced last April in an Amnesty International report that highlighted overcrowding – in 2020, talk of a prison population of 211,000 per 85,000 beds, but also about violations of the right to life, “deliberately withholding life-saving medical care for ill prisoners, refusing to authorize or delaying emergency hospitalization, and failing to investigate responsibility”.
Now even more troubling are reports from those lucky enough to make it out alive from these hellish places: while police are shooting at demonstrators, deliberately aiming at the face and genitals to finally stigmatize a generation, prisoners are behind bars. coercion to violence and gang rape, which are filmed by guards. The collected material, according to witnesses who found the strength to remember, could later be used against them as blackmail. Thus, those who manage to escape alive and are not sentenced to death after the summary trial are left with the shame, disgrace and pain of having to live with the experience of a total nullification of human dignity.
Faced with these stories, celebrities from all over the world did not remain indifferent to the requests for help and appeals of the population and, in a simple but powerful gesture, decided to express their indignation at the regime, taking up a pen and paper. From Bryan Cranston to Cate Blanchett, from Elijah Wood to Jason Momoa, from Marion Cotillard to Samuel L. Jackson and Jada Pinkett Smith., more than 50 people protested against the imprisonment and executions of Iranian demonstrators by posting their photos with a banner #stopexecutionsiniran. The images, assembled and edited into a single video by director Ana Lily Amirpour and actress Mozhan Marno, based on an idea by Iranian-American screenwriter Nicole Najafi, are a strong message against Iranian absolutism, which hopes to break the population and completely subjugate it to the dictates of religious fundamentalism.
“We support the Iranian people in their fight for freedomThe sequence of shots reads: “Thousands of innocent protesters are in prison. And some of them have already been executed. Most likely there will be many more. In these prisons, innocent men and women are tortured. They are being sentenced to prison terms because they want basic freedoms. For the protest against the barbarian dictatorship. “Don’t let the Iranians’ fight be trivial. Give them your voice,” with a sincere appeal from the director, who posted the video on social media, urging users to do the same to spark collective and international outcry following the demonstrative gesture of cutting a lock of hair shared in recent months. many celebrities.
It is hoped that the visibility and media coverage of the campaign can spur Western governments to make tangible and politically significant gestures such as parliamentary questions, summoning Iranian ambassadors and diplomats, and all sorts of actions that will show the Iranians that “peace be with them” and that he determined to “put pressure on the Islamic Republic”. As Ana Lily Amirpour writes, “This is not a protest, this is a revolution. And it will end when we get rid of this barbaric Islamic regime and Iran becomes free.”
Source: Elle