Washington D.C. – This year should have been Mahsa/Jina Amini’s twenty-sixth birthday. Instead, her name has become inseparable from ‘Zan, Zendegi, Azadi’ (Woman, Life, Freedom), a movement that redefined Iranian society. Since Mahsa’s killing in morality police custody in September 2022, Iranian women and allies have continued a generational struggle that confronts Iran’s stringent hijab laws and other forms of patriarchy and state repression.
The scars of this clash remain, as hundreds were killed in the protests, thousands injured or imprisoned, and today countless remain behind bars or live with the scars of state violence. United Nations investigative bodies along with human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch have documented the brutal crackdown by Iran’s security services, which killed 551 including 49 women and 68 children. There has still been no accountability for the vast majority of human rights violations committed against the people of Iran. Scores of Iranians still bear the wounds of security services, or are still in jail or facing prison sentences for merely standing for justice and dignity.
Inside Iran, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement has not disappeared. Civil society, from labor unions to feminist collectives, continues to insist on a future where equality, justice, and self-determination are non-negotiable. These demands are no longer whispers on the margins; they have entered the fabric of Iranian life, despite an unrelenting campaign of arrests, executions, and censorship.
This struggle is not just met with repression by authorities inside Iran – it has also faced fresh assaults from outside that we as Iranian Americans must confront if we seek to embody the spirit of Women, Life Freedom.
The message of “Woman, Life, Freedom” was violently co-opted by Benjamin Netanyahu and the pro-war lobby in Israel and the U.S.’s unprovoked and illegal war on Iran. While promising “liberation”, Israeli bombs killed women and other civilians in strikes on neighborhoods, power stations, and even Evin Prison – the very site where women activists are held. More than a thousand people were killed, thousands more wounded, and the fragile gains women had wrested from the state since Amini’s murder were put at risk. Liberation cannot be delivered by warplanes; it is built from the ground up, by those who risk everything to demand justice. As Iranian Americans, we must do more to stop those who would exploit the suffering of the Iranian people to advance their own violent agendas against the Iranian people.
Meanwhile, for Iranians seeking safety abroad, repression has not ended at Iran’s borders. Our own U.S. government has banned Iranians from coming to the U.S. and arrested hundreds of Iranian nationals who were already here and are now being held in ICE detention facilities and face deportation to Iran or a third country. We have been in contact with at least one Iranian asylee who suffered a grievous eye injury from security forces in the 2022 protests and yet was detained by ICE and deported back to Iran. While our own government officials speak the language of solidarity with Iranian women, policies like war and deportation abandon Iranians and all other people most at risk.
Three years on, Woman, Life, Freedom remains a living struggle: against authoritarianism, against foreign bombs, and against the indifference of states that exploit the language of women’s liberation while betraying it in practice. Its power lies in the courage and resilience of ordinary Iranians who continue to sing, dance, protest, and imagine freedom even in the face of brutal crackdowns and violence.
Today, we honor Mahsa Jina Amini and the hundreds of others killed in the uprising that bears her name. We honor the women still imprisoned and the families still grieving. And we recommit to supporting Iranians on their own terms – not through war, not through deportations, but by amplifying their demands for dignity, justice, and freedom. Woman, Life, Freedom is not a slogan for states to co-opt. It is a promise the people of Iran continue to keep alive.