Attribution to Tasnim News Agency

The woman on the left is Taraneh Alidosti. She is an Iranian actress. She is best known for her role in The Salesmen (2016) which won an academy award for Best Foreign Language Film..

While the nmedia has been fairly silent over the last couple of weeks, despite brutal governmment crackdowns, the protests in Iran continue. According to the Norway based Iran Human Rights NGO (IHRNGO), 326 people have been killed by Iranian security forces since the protests began. This includes 43 children and 25 women. Known protesters are continuously facing death and women have been raped. At least 1,000 protesters have been indicted with charges, many of them punishable by death.

Taraneh recently posted a picture of herself on Instagram. She did this without wearing a hijab. She did this while holding a sign saying “Women, Life, Freedom”, in Kurdish. In the caption, underneath the post, she wrote,

“Your final absence, the migration of singing birds, is not the end of this rebellion,” 

What is more courageous about this is that she was in Iran, as she posted this. She has no intention of leaving. In another Instagram post, she wrote.

“I will stand with the families of the prisoners and the murdered, and demand their rights,…I will fight for my home. I will pay whatever price to stand for my right,”

Bravery, plain and simple.