Thirty-four Iranian female prisoners started a hunger strike to “honour” the second anniversary of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement and the death of Mahsa Amini, announced the Iranian Nobel laureate prisoner Nargis Mohammadi.

Amini, 22, was killed while in custody by the morality police on September 16, 2022, after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly. Her death sparked protests across Iran and gave birth to the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, which shook the country for months.

Mohammadi, 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, held since November 2021, announced in a post on X that “once again, the women in the prison held for political and ideological reasons in Evin (n.s. prison – penitentiary center near Tehran) started a hunger strike in solidarity with the people protesting in Iran against the government’s oppressive policies.”

“Today, September 15, 2024, 34 female political prisoners began a hunger strike to commemorate the second anniversary of the Women, Life, Freedom movement and the assassination of Mahsa (Zina) Amini,” Mohammadi said on an X account she manages her family.

“We reaffirm our commitment to the establishment of democracy, freedom and equality and to defeat theocratic despotism. Today, we raise our voices louder and strengthen our resolve,” he added.

Demonstrations over Amini’s death, protests against the compulsory use of headscarves and against religious conservatism shocked the Iranian regime. The regime’s response was to crack down and methodically crush the protests and the movement: at least 551 people were killed and thousands more arrested, according to non-governmental human rights organizations.

Ten men were also executed in cases linked to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the latest of whom, 34-year-old Golamreza Rasai, was hanged in August, days after the new president, Massoud Pezeskian, took office.

Human rights organizations also denounce the increase in executions for all kinds of crimes, in order to sow fear and prevent opposing voices from any trend of protests, demonstrations against the regime.

Nargis Mohammadi, 52, a 2023 Nobel laureate especially for her fight against the death penalty, has been in prison since November 2021 and has spent much of the last decade in custody.

The Iranian activist was sentenced in June to a new one-year prison term for “propaganda against the state”, adding to a long list of other charges, for which she was sentenced to twelve years and three months in prison, 154 lashes, two years of exile and various social and criminal penalties.