An Iranian Activist Faces the Death Penalty. Can Global Solidarity Help Again?
Rapper Toomaj Salehi Needs Our Support, Like Two Iranian LGBTQ+ Activists Last Year
We will meet Toomaj Salehi through his lyrics…
We live in the age of science, women are beaten for their beauty, thrown in the back of a police van, taken to unnamed prisons.
Words like these are the reason the 33-year-old rapper was charged last month with “spreading corruption on earth” and has been sentenced to death in his beloved homeland of Iran.
Salehi was first placed behind bars in 2021 for his song Soorakh Moosh (Rathole). It’s an evocative track that went viral in days, as it poetically calls upon people (particularly the Iranian diaspora in the West) who turn a blind eye to the crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
If you cover your eyes, your hands are drenched in blood.
Arrest was supposed to silence Salehi, but when released on bail, he rapped against the regime with even more fervour. He spoke of women’s rights, corruption, child labour, police brutality and impunity.
He showed his face in music videos, he’d often walk the streets of Iran proudly revealing his location, and he acted like there wasn’t a…
