If you are seeing this Persian hashtag #اعدام_نکنید in your feed, you might already know that there are three young Iranians that are sentenced to death for the crime of participating in peaceful protests last fall. The protests were about ongoing economic hardships. The unconfirmed number of protesters gunned down is in thousands. That was before the downing of the flight PS752 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in January.
Peaceful protests and assemblies are protected in Iran’s constitution. Authorities never gave a damn about the constitution or human rights. They always found a way around them with amendments, unwritten rules, and BS court rulings.
In my work meetings, people often ask one another about how the pandemic is affecting their first homelands. My response has always been that Iranians have been fighting the more infectious pandemics of injustice, corruption, and incompetence for so long. To them, COVID-19 does not seem as scary or painful.
This hashtag is not in the hope of anything. It is just an echo of the howl of a nation in agony.
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