This is the text of Feminists4jina’s speech at Berlin rally in solidarity with the people of Iran, on 18.01.2026.
Photo by Ome
——
Speaking as an Iranian has become unbearably hard.
It feels as if someone is always speaking for you.
If you are allowed to speak at all,
It is only to answer a question
designed to confirm what they already believe.
They ask:
“Do you hope for help from the United States or Israel?”
“Are the death toll numbers really twelve thousand?”
No one asked us any questions
when the fascist regime ruling us
ranked the world’s top executioner
No one asked any questions,
when, after the regime’s image of power cracked during the twelve-day war,
more than a million Afghan neighbors
were deported within weeks, back into the hell of the Taliban.
No one asked
about the tens of thousands of excess deaths
imposed on us during the pandemic,
No one asked
how our water, our air, and our forests were destroyed,
and slow death was engineered for entire populations.
No one asked
how people were made poorer every day
so Islamist oligarchs could grow richer.
No one asked us anything
when, for nearly five decades,
uprising after uprising
our loved ones got executed, or jailed, or were shot across the country,
their bodies disappeared, or sold back to their families.
No one asked
how rape and murder were made so cheap and easy.
No one asked any questions
Because
We seem to matter only
when our lives can be made relevant to Western states or Western audiences.
Today we have seen it clearly.
The empire staged a gladiator war
inside Iran’s ruling class.
One faction leaning West.
One faction leaning East.
They wanted to see which one was worth investing in.
Which one could rule more cheaply.
Which one could continue—
weaker abroad,
more brutal at home.
This cycle of war and negotiation
has shaped decades of our lives.
Behind curtains of isolation,
a fascist regime kills us
and loots us.
And Profit is all that matters.
You know what the cruelest part is?
Both defenders and critics of the empire in the West
expect us—
as people of West Asia—
to fight our own gladiator battles
against others in the region.
So they can watch
From their relatively safe homes and streets.
They passionately debate
who deserves sympathy more.
“Ah, this is real terrorism.”
“Ah, that is real resistance.”
We are forced to stand opposite other people facing genocide,
so their killers
or distant supporters
can gain moral credit.
After more than two years of a livestreamed genocide in Gaza,
fascism has been normalized worldwide.
Middle Eastern bodies
have become commodities.
And now those who never lived in the region,
who never cared to learn
about over a century of struggles
against domination and exploitation,
are setting prices on our lives.
Our feminist answer is to move beyond.
Beyond the world of images,
identities,
and prices.
We return to bodies.
Bodies that work.
Bodies that give birth.
Bodies that are killed.
We speak to you as feminists
who carry wounds across generations.
and continued dreaming
of solidarity among the peoples of the Global South—
especially the so-called “Middle East”—
for autonomy, equality, and freedom.
Three years ago,
our cry of Woman, Life, Freedom
echoed wherever ears could hear.
It terrified fascists everywhere—
secular or religious,
Iranian or not.
They rushed to erase it.
To distort it.
To leave no horizon for liberation except for choosing among patriarchal, racist and capitalist forces.
Today, what fills our bodies most is rage.
Rage without compromise.
Rage at anyone who speaks for us
without building real connections
between oppressed peoples—
from Afghanistan
to Kurdistan
to Iraq
to Syria
to Lebanon
to Palestine
To Sudan
We do not preach hollow pacifism that only preserves the status quo. We recognize the right to resistance for all the oppressed, including people of Iran! And we do not rush to judge them by standards that serve only a particular group of people.
We demand life.
We demand dignity.
We demand freedom.
Woman Life Freedom