Translated from an audio message by Soheil Arabi in Grater Tehran Prison
Soheil Arabi, an Iranian blogger imprisoned for five years for opinions he posted on his Facebook, called on the Iranian people on Monday August 27th to rise up against the Iranian regime's dictatorship.
His message, recorded on an audio file from inside the Greater Tehran Prison, has been circulating on Iranian social media since Monday.
"We will not wait for the decision, support or intervention of any stranger." He said in that audio. "No country has been liberated and prosperous without the actions of its own people," Soheil Arabi continued in the beginning of this message, before rejecting the notion of reforms from within the system. "We will not beg for our rights, we will fight and we will take back our native country."
This prominent political prisoner refers to the experiences of history to assume that "organizing demonstrations in silence to fight fascists is nothing but betraying his homeland".
"Do not offer them new victims, new hostages: they must be eliminated. If we do not take advantage of the opportunity provided for us today, it would amount to offering them another forty years to destroy us as they see fit.
"No to silence, no to oblivion, death or freedom," says Soheil Arabi, who calls for protest and uprising against the injustice, the brutality of the Bassij militias, the headquarters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and "all the other nests of corruption.
The captive blogger repeats once again at the end of his message that demonstrations alone will not overcome this brutal and medieval regime, and will only increase the number of victims. And he finishes his message by saying "the moment of the Revolution has arrived".
