Kurdish political prisoner Zeinab Jalalian who has been imprisoned for life in the Prison of Khoy, in northwestern Iran, sent out a letter to political prisoners Atena Daemi and Golrokh Iraee who have been banished from Evin Prison to the notorious Qarchak Prison in Varamin.
She thanked them for their letter and urged human rights organizations to take action to free all political prisoners. Her letter reads:
Hail to the free people in chains,
I am the cry of freedom coming from behind the prison’s thick walls and cold bars.
I send my best salutations to you, incarcerated freedom-lovers.
My dear comrades, Golrokh and Atena, and everyone who has remembered me. I hear you well from behind the walls. This is the Heaven’s best music. Your voice reminds of my country’s mountains standing tall and proud. (Your support) has been the most valuable gift to me during my ten years in prison.
As a poem says, “My cry did not remain without an answer, your good heart is the response to my outcry.”
My dear friends and comrades, when I was told that you are behind prison bars, my heart was broken. After a long time, I heard that you have not forgotten me and you have written to me despite all the pain, violence and hardships inflicted on you in prison.
I am truly grateful to you and I hope that with my efforts and resistance I can return all your love and kindness.
I promise you to struggle until my last drop of blood. I will struggle so that I could be worthy of you and everyone else who have remembered me in the most difficult conditions.
You are in prison for a crime you have not committed. Contrary to what they think that crying for freedom is a crime, I think it is the most beautiful and glorious charge.
Wishing for a day when no freedom lover is in prison.
In conclusion, I urge all human rights organizations to do their utmost efforts to free those who are incarcerated in the Iranian regime’s prisons for demanding freedom and equality, so that these dear ones would not spend their youth behind prison bars.
Resistance is life.
Zeinab Jalalian
Prison of Khoy
