Iran’s Literati Call For Release of Their Detained Colleagues

More than 600 Iranian authors, poets, and civil rights activists issued a statement Sunday in protest to the Islamic Republic’s arrest of artists and writers, demanding their release. 

Noting that the country is on the brink of “collapse,” they said the situation is so grave that citizens, even children and teenagers, do not feel safe anymore. 

Rejecting the entirety of the clerical regime, they said they don't find anything negotiable “from the top to the bottom” of the Islamic Republic. 

They also expressed concerns about the lives of their fellow writers, journalists, and artists who have been detained throughout the country since the start of the current wave of the protests, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. 

The signatories added that they hold the government directly responsible for whatever happens to members of the literary community, and demanded their unconditional and immediate release.

They also decried the government’s shutting down of the internet to prevent the news of their atrocities reaching the world. 

Earlier on Sunday, a number of intellectuals from the Arab world also called for international pressure against the Islamic Republic to release its detained scholars, civil and political activists from Iranian prisons.