Born in Evin Prison, Iranian Author on Protests Against "Authoritarian, Theocratic Regime"
Deadly anti-government protests continue to rock Iran in the midst of the country’s spiraling economic crisis. Thousands of civilians are believed to have been shot dead by government forces in the past few weeks. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to threaten military intervention in addition to a harsh new set of economic sanctions that the U.S. introduced this week. Although a government-instituted communications blackout has made it difficult to assess exactly how many people have been killed, we sit down with Iranian author Sahar Delijani to discuss the “working-class uprising” against Iran’s “capitalist regime.” Delijani was born in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison — where her leftist activist parents were detained in the 1980s — just a few years before her uncle was executed during the 1988 massacres of Iranian political prisoners. “This is part of a long struggle of Iranian people to oust this regime, against tyranny, against dictatorship, against an authoritarian, theocratic regime, a military state,” she says. “This has been happening, partly due to sanctions, but also partly to this rampant corruption and mismanagement.”