From the Cry for Freedom to the Call for Dignity: Stop the Machinery of Fascism

This petition was written by a number of Afghan-Iranian activists, writers, and social advocates.

To: Members of the cultural community, the media, and the general public

Date: 30 June 2025

In the aftermath of days during which the people and residents of Iran lived under the shadow of military aggression and the blatant invasion by Israel -- marked by profound psychological insecurity -- it is essential, even if only for a moment, to turn our attention to another human catastrophe. A crisis that, although inflicted on the bodies and souls of the “other,” now reveals itself more than ever in the diminished and bowed figure of human dignity.

Yes, we are speaking of the crisis of Afghan-hatred: a moral, structural, and historical crisis directed at Afghan workers and refugees living in Iran. Those whose very being and existence, for decades, have been treated as bargaining chips in political games; targets of othering, hate-mongering, and both covert and overt violence by regional and global systems of domination.

As the scent of gunpowder and the sound of bombs continue to echo the collective devastation wrought by war, we must urgently seek a liberatory, antiwar understanding of what war truly means. We must remember that military invasions and imposed wars are not limited to death tolls or the rubble of destroyed cities. Displacement, vulnerability, and widespread psychological trauma are also among the bitter legacies of postcolonial warfare. And who better than the war-weary people of Afghanistan to understand the poisonous consequences of decades of attritional and proxy wars waged by imperial powers and their domestic and regional allies? Who better knows that war is a deadly and dirty game of domination, marketed under hollow promises of "democracy" or the "war on terror," but ultimately resulting in the surrender of lives and lands to religious theocracies like the Islamic Emirate and the Islamic Republic? Who better understands that in the face of militarized emergencies and imposed wars, human beings are reduced to nothing but bare life?

For years, the Afghan refugees and laborers have embodied the very concept of “bare life.” After decades of proxy and imperialist wars, and the repeated collapse of their political, social, and economic structures, they have been forced -- either by necessity or, as in the past four years, by coercion -- to leave their homeland. This open letter is a call to awaken the collective conscience of every freedom-seeker who still believes in the possibility of liberatory action in the name of humanity. It is an invitation to come together and take immediate, unified action in response to a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe affecting Afghan people. This catastrophe -- paralleling the lifespan of the Islamic Republic and other reactionary forces -- has, over decades, been normalized and routinised through enemy-making, hate propaganda, and baseless security accusations framed as political discourse. It is a catastrophe that, all these years, has unfolded silently, unseen and unacknowledged, right beside us. A catastrophe called fascism, which, through the simultaneous imposition of discrimination and deportation on Afghan migrants, has taken place not in Nazi Germany but in the cities of Iran.

The horror and cruelty that the Islamic Republic inflicts on Afghan residents in Iran, regardless of its historical or political justification, is nothing short of fascistic and disgraceful. Documented evidence shows that throughout its history, the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained control and spread fear by inventing “imaginary enemies” from among repressed groups, students, women, religious, ethnic, linguistic, and gender minorities, intellectuals, and, above all, Afghan migrants.

In every political crisis, whether in response to the brutal suppression of protests and liberation movements like Woman, Life, Freedom, or to external military threats, the regime has redirected public anger toward low-cost scapegoats such as migrants, manipulating social divisions and reinforcing class-cultural hegemonies. The bitter irony is this: while the Islamic Republic has exploited Afghan laborers to implement its development and economic projects, without granting even the most basic rights, it has simultaneously incited moral panic and demonized their presence, portraying them as threats. Now, at the height of this crisis, it is time to decisively reject more than four decades of fascism disguised as hospitality in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

If we truly believe in human dignity, if we hold even the slightest faith in humanity, then we must separate ourselves from the policies and practices of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is time to recognize the forces of oppression on both sides of political borders, beyond nationalist narratives and identity politics, and to stand with the most silenced and vulnerable human beings of our time.

It is time to speak clearly and courageously against the violent, quasi-fascist policies that have unfolded before our eyes for decades. We have watched with disillusioned eyes as Afghan migrants have been reduced to the "non-citizens" of the modern era. Under the rule of the Islamic Emirate, its Western and regional backers, the Islamic Republic, and other proxy forces, violence is the only law that governs their lives. The flood of refugees fleeing Taliban dictatorship is a stinging rebuke to all who claim to care about humanity. Over the past four years, hundreds of children, students, academics, teachers, artists, writers, activists, and members of minority groups have faced systematic repression and retaliation by the Taliban.

The death machine now operating at the Afghan border under the Islamic Republic of Iran targets the voiceless victims of both internal repression and foreign deals. The blood of every individual caught in the Taliban’s grip is also on the hands of the Islamic Republic and its far-right allies who support these deportations.

We, the authors of this letter, are often the children of a generation who recognized the meaning of inequality and intolerance long before we ever learned to write those words, reading them instead in our mothers’ eyes and our fathers’ hands. We are intimately familiar with the bitter taste of coercion, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, or scattered across the unfamiliar borders of the world, where our flight has often been intertwined with the threat of death. But what is unfolding in Iran under the rule of the Islamic Republic is a deep-rooted, essentialist, and chronic process of dehumanization, one that draws stark lines of hatred and explicit violence between “us” and “them.”

We know that the Afghan migrant, structurally denied all the rights and privileges of a nation-state, is the moral litmus test of our era. Their position lies at the intersection of all forms of oppression, in both Iran and Afghanistan, and in the broader power dynamics of the contemporary world. We are determined never to cease in our efforts to restore dignity and security for migrants, and to dismantle the walls of fascism that divide us.

Our Demands:

• We are fully aware of the compounded suffering of the people of Iran and the region, especially women, and intellectual, religious, ethnic, sexual, and gender minorities. In many instances, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with liberation movements and progressive forces in the struggle for freedom and equality. Nevertheless, the mass expulsion of migrants by the Islamic Republic, regardless of the rhetorical distinction between “legal” and “illegal” migrants, is, in our view, unacceptable. We call for its immediate and unconditional halt.
• We understand that military, economic, and political crises can fuel fear, anger, and, in a word, a sense of urgency and desperation. However, we firmly believe that no crisis renders the moral compass obsolete. No condition can justify or explain violence, discrimination, or hatred toward fellow human beings. Human dignity, and the struggle to preserve it, is the dividing line between us and reactionary, regressive forces. For us, the principle of shared humanity transcends lineage, class, ethnicity, and all other divisions. It is not merely a virtue but a foundational truth and an urgent, inescapable necessity. Therefore, we call on all progressive and independent forces, both inside and outside Iran’s borders, to stand against the normalization and dehumanization of Afghan people. With every tool and platform available to them, we urge them to become a voice and refuge for Afghan migrants, and to join us in resisting the widespread apathy and confronting the structural and overt forms of anti-Afghan sentiment.
• To speak of freedom and to choose dignity is the only path to our collective salvation. Freedom from all forms of subjugation, suffocation, moral decay, and internal and external tyranny is a prerequisite for our collective liberation. Our priority is freedom from the grip of discriminatory systems, freedom from structures that normalize and internalize inequality, and reduce human beings to the status of bare life. Yet the realization of this freedom depends not only on the fall of any external regime, but first and foremost on the awakening of conscience in the face of ongoing crimes, violence, and terror. We therefore call on all forces, media outlets, public figures, movements, collectives, and independent activists to heed the call of the collective conscience, to hear the approaching footsteps of fascism. And just as you stood united in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in a shared struggle against all forms of tyranny and dehumanization, we now ask you to stand once again, this time against Afghan-hatred and state fascism. By sharing and signing this statement, take an active part in spreading the moral courage and resistance needed to confront the machinery of fascism.

And finally, our essential question for all readers is this: Is it only the will of rulers and oppressors that sustains tyranny and prevents the realization of freedom? Or does every person who turns away from their moral responsibility toward humanity become another link in the chain of domination?

~~~

Initial Signatories:

• Zahra Mousawi
• Sara Gohari
• Ghogha Taban
• Katayoun Keshavarzi
• Ghazaleh Motamed
• Mila Mosafer
• Laebeh Aram
• Elaheh Sadr
• Habib Farzad
• Donya Ahmadi
• Shabnam Simia
• Mohammad Agha Zaki
• Ardalan Bastani
• Sabereh E'tebar
• Abdollah Salahy
• Ruhollah Taheri
• Ramazan Asghari
• Raouf Ajamal
• Mehdi Sarbaz
• Mozhgan Faraji