Coinciding with the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in the custody of the Morality Police and the start of the 2022 nationwide protests in Iran, Amirhossein Moradi and Ali Younesi, two imprisoned students, emphasized that “from universities and schools to the streets,” the ultimate goal of the “bloody pledge” is the “overthrow of Khamenei.”
In this message, which was shared on X on Sunday, September 15, the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death under the Morality Police’s custody, Moradi and Younesi described the 2022 nationwide protests as “the brave uprising of the Iranian people.” They stated, “On the eve of the new academic year, which is intertwined with bloody days but brilliant battles, to our fellow students from universities to the streets, to all those who believe they must stay and reclaim, to those who turned the streets into universities of resistance, to those who could not return to their second homes (schools and universities), to those who this year are shouldering the responsibility in the trenches of freedom, to all our comrades behind prison bars who were never separated from us—we stand beside you still.”
These two imprisoned students, declaring that “our generation is the generation of uprisings,” added that this generation “fought wholeheartedly in Mahsa’s uprising,” and despite arrests and deaths, “it did not and will not surrender.”
Moradi and Younesi stressed that the entry of the generation of students from the 2022 nationwide protests into universities, and their experience of that “uprising,” has turned this into a “nightmare for the regime as the new school year begins” and from now on, the regime must “expect a response from schools and universities for every crime.”
In the statement released by these two imprisoned students on the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death and the start of the 2022 nationwide protests, they recalled how Masoud Pezeshkian, the regime’s new president, “deceptively claimed that students have the right to protest.” They emphasized, “But he didn’t say what happens to students after they protest! Yes, we do have this right, whether he hypocritically admits it or not.”
These two political prisoners, reaffirming their commitment to republicanism, declared that “the people’s right to sovereignty and democracy” is “the most fundamental right,” and added that they “will achieve it alongside the people at any cost.”
Amirhossein Moradi and Ali Younesi further stated, “The powder keg of anger and hatred, built up by executions, massacres, and oppression, only needs a spark to explode—a spark that can be ignited in a school or university and trigger a nationwide uprising that will not end until Khamenei is overthrown.”
Amirhossein Moradi is a physics student and a winner of the Astronomy Olympiad, and Ali Younesi is a computer science student who won the gold medal in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in 2017.
Mahsa (Jina) Amini died on September 15, 2022, a few days after being arrested by the Morality Police, at Kasra Hospital in Tehran. Her death sparked a widespread wave of protests across Iran that continued for months in the streets, universities, and schools.
During the suppression of the 2022 nationwide protests by government forces, at least 750 civilians were killed, and thousands were injured and arrested.
