The Washington Post yesterday published an op-ed by Roxana titled “Will Elections Loosen the Grip of Iran’s Hard-liners?” The text is posted in full below.
“Roxana, when you go back to America,” my cellmate entreated me last month, “please tell others that our country is not only about the nuclear issue. It is also about people like us.”
My cellmate was one of the many “prisoners of conscience” I left behind when I was released from Tehran’s Evin Prison on May 11. Many were women, student and labor activists, researchers, and academics who have been detained solely because they peacefully pursued freedom of expression, freedom of association or religious beliefs. Several of them face vague charges such as “acting against national security,” like I did.
