Be Our Voice

​For weeks, people across Iran have risked their lives in the streets, facing live ammunition, metal pellets, batons, and tear gas at the hands of security forces.  What began as anger at soaring prices and deepening poverty has become a nationwide uprising against nearly five decades of repression, corruption, and denial of basic rights by the Islamic Republic.
 
Iran is not a fragile or newly formed state. It is one of the world’s oldest continuous countries, with a civilisation that has contributed profoundly to science, literature, philosophy, architecture, and systems of governance across many centuries.  Different Iranian ethnicities and cultures together helped pioneer ideas of religious tolerance, legal protection, and civic responsibility that continue to inspire people far beyond Iran’s borders.
 
Since 1979, the Islamic Republic has worked systematically to sever this civilisational continuity and consolidate power through fear and division.  Its security apparatus and unelected institutions have repeatedly crushed protest movements, censored independent voices, criminalised dissent, and used imprisonment, torture, and executions to silence those who demand change.  While a small, connected elite enjoy wealth at home and abroad, ordinary Iranians struggle with chronic inflation, unemployment, environmental crises, and collapsing public services.
 
The current uprising follows a familiar pattern: peaceful demonstrations that quickly spread to cities and provinces across the country, followed by an escalation from slogans about economic hardship to direct calls for an end to the Islamic Republic.  In response, authorities have ordered harsh crackdowns, including internet shutdowns, mass arrests, and live fire against protesters, causing thousands of casualties and creating a near‑blackout of reliable information from many areas.  Hospitals and medical staff are placed under surveillance, and injured protesters risk detention or disappearance if they seek treatment.
 
Despite this, Iranians are rejecting the regime’s attempts to divide them.  Protesters from all backgrounds, Kurds, Azeris, Persians, Baluchis, Lurs, Arabs, Turkmen, and others, are chanting for freedom, dignity, and democratic self‑determination in more than 100 cities and in every province.  Their message is simple: every Iranian, regardless of ethnicity, language, gender, or region, must be equal before the law and free to shape the country’s future.
 
Among the opposition voices, Reza Pahlavi has emerged as a widely recognised figure advocating a secular, democratic transition grounded in Iran’s territorial integrity and equal rights for all citizens.  His platform emphasises separation of religion and state, free and fair elections, and a process in which Iranians themselves decide, through referendums and a constituent assembly, whether their future system of government should be a republic, a constitutional monarchy, or another democratic model.  Many political groups, civil society organisations, activists, and cultural figures in Iran and in the diaspora have rallied around the principle that no form of rule should be imposed; instead, the people must choose at the ballot box.
 
This vision is not a project of fragmentation but of reunion.  The movement growing inside and outside Iran insists that Iran’s territorial integrity is non‑negotiable and that attempts to carve away parts of the country only serve those who benefit from a weakened, divided nation.  It calls for a future where borders are secure, diversity is celebrated, and no Iranian is treated as lesser, displaced, or left behind.
 
Right now, however, many inside Iran cannot speak freely or safely to the outside world.  Internet shutdowns, media restrictions, and intimidation of journalists mean that images of wounded protesters and grieving families often reach the world only in fragments, if at all.  People who film, share, or even watch such footage risk arrest, torture, or worse.
 
This is why the role of the diaspora, allies, and human rights organisations is so critical.  From London to Manchester, Paris to Berlin, Toronto to Los Angeles and beyond, millions have already marched to stand with Iranians demanding change.  Groups such as RAPAR, a Manchester‑based human rights organisation rooted in the experiences of displaced people, work every day with those whose rights have been denied, helping them to organise, speak out, and seek protection.
 
RAPAR stands with the people of Iran in their struggle for freedom, dignity, and democratic self‑determination, and supports their call for a peaceful transition to a secular democracy chosen by the Iranian people themselves.  Governments, trade unions, community organisations, and individuals everywhere are urged to support this movement: by amplifying credible voices from inside Iran, pressing for accountability for abuses, providing practical assistance to those at risk, and refusing to legitimise institutions that shoot, jail, and silence their own citizens.
 
Their courage demands our solidarity.
Their enforced silence demands our voice.
Their struggle demands that we speak clearly, loudly, and without fear, until every Iranian can speak freely for themselves.