Celebrating a Memoir/Cookbook by Sepideh Gholian: Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes 

The UK Guardian reviewer said of the book that: “In every line and in every moment it attempts to recreate, it is entirely and unconditionally defiant.”¹

“A fighting woman cannot be imprisoned because her voice is louder than prison walls. This book is proof”—This quotation from Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner,²  accompanied the announcement of the publication of The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s Most Notorious Prisons in 16 Recipes, by Sepideh Gholian. Thirty-year-old Sepideh is a political prisoner held behind Evin’s walls, but her profound empathy with fellow prisoners, her fury at oppression, her joy in comradeship, and her hope for the future, ring loud and clear around the world with this new book released in April, 2025 by OneWorld Publications. It calls for readers to try out the 16 recipes that accompany stories of 16 political prisoners, some including harrowing accounts of prison abuse and torture. She has been repeatedly imprisoned by Iran’s theocratic regime since 2018 when she was 23 years old (see her heroic background story in the IEC website under #FreeSepideh).

Here’s just one tidbit to whet your appetite:

Here’s a recipe for madeleines with which she highlights the story of Marzieh Amiri, a journalist sentenced to over 10 years in Evin and 148 lashes for “collusion against national security” (i.e., covering labor strikes in front of parliament).

Bake it the night before, stick it in your pocket, stride down the pavement, let your hijab [headscarf] hang lopsided so you’ll feel some wind in your hair, and take a bite out of the madeleine with the rap playing for you. Carry out a tiny act of feminism in the name of Marzieh Amiri… One day, when our people are victorious, I’ll bake you a cake in the streets of Ahvaz [her hometown in oppressed Khuzestan province]. That day isn’t far off now. I hope we can bring it about together.

The story of how sections of the book were smuggled out of prison in pieces and images is also fascinating.³ It was a determined collaborative feat sent out of Evin prison in scraps of paper or via phone calls, patched together, translated and then published.

Prisoners in Iran on weekly hunger strike against executions announced that their weekly “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign has entered its 71st consecutive week, spreading now to 46 prisons across Iran.

Below is an excerpt of the June 3, 2025 post by @no_to_execution_Tuesdays on IG (also reposted by Burn The Cage).

Since the beginning of June, there’s been an average of 7 people who have been hanged per day… With greetings and gratitude to the families of prisoners who have been shouting "No to Execution" in different parts of the country for weeks and supporting this campaign, we once again call on the general public, especially the families of prisoners sentenced to death, to support the "No to Execution Tuesdays" campaign in any way possible and not to leave the protesting families alone. The voice of "No to Execution" must resonate in every city and street, because this government is daily causing grief to families in every corner of the country. Our strength lies in our unity and solidarity.

They also posted their support for a massive truckers’ strike⁴  now in its third week (with 40+ strikers arrested).

Iran Targets Afghan Migrants 

Amid the horrific rise in executions overall,⁵  the execution of one particular oppressed, ethnic group stands out: Afghan migrants who are often undocumented laborers in Iran.

In 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed at least 80 Afghans, reportedly three times as many as the previous year. And in the first five months of 2025, it executed 32, according to a statement by 84 human rights organizations. They noted: “Iran is home to one of the world’s largest Afghan migrant populations, many of whom fled after the Taliban's return to power in 2021. The spike in executions comes amid worsening economic conditions in Iran and an increase in anti-migrant rhetoric from officials, who have increasingly blamed Afghan migrants for the country’s social and economic challenges.”⁶ 

The regime’s strategy of scapegoating the most oppressed and vulnerable sections of people in Iran, in this case Afghan refugees fleeing from one fascist theocracy of the Taliban into another of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Also, oppressed nationalities like Baluchis, Kurds and Arabs, are scapegoats in the IRI’s attempt to solidify a social base of reactionary misogynists and Great-Persia nationalists. This in turn helps them to hammer into silence sections of the population. In this way, Iran’s Execution Republic uses the noose not only to spread terror, but also to normalize and numb people to state murder, femicide and repression of minorities. In this light, the struggle to end executions, and in particular the steadfast growth of the prisoners’ hunger strike, takes on great importance and calls for solidarity from all justice-loving people of the world.

In a sick irony, this whipping up of a narrow, reactionary nationalism among sections of Iranians feeds into the much more dangerous, and much more reprehensible, anti-Iran and anti-Muslim gangsterism of the U.S. imperialists, now on disgusting display with Trump’s travel ban on 12 countries including Iran, and the open threats which lie just below their current nuclear negotiations. 

Support and Emulate the Spirit of Entire and Unconditional Defiance

We call on everyone to reflect on the beam of light and hope against repression and oppression emanating from the prisoners in some of the deepest hellholes on our planet—the infamous and murderous prisons of Iran, especially the historically savage torture prison called Evin. It is a challenge to everyone on our planet who find ourselves facing off against fascist regimes like that in Iran, and now in the U.S., to raise our sights with righteous anger and courage and forge the road forward in the interest of a better world and future for humanity.