Former Iranian prisoner of conscious Atena Farghadani has said that she would prefer to go to jail and be placed in the solitaries to bow to the brutality of this regime.
Atena, a cartoonist and a defender of children’s rights who was arrested and jailed back in Dec. 2014 for drawing cartoons of Iran’s parliament members and was released on bail last month under international pressure, has written an open letter insisting on continuing her human rights and artistic activities against the mullahs misogynist policies.

In her letter she writes “I prefer wholeheartedly the hardship and the pain of the prison and its solitaries” to submitting to the Iranian regime’s will.
In response to Mehdi Khazali, a hardline Iranian regime official, Miss Farghadani writes: “when I was released from the Ward 2 of the IRGC prison, me, along with my mother, went to the university to enroll. Your sister, while intruded in my very personal life, told us, if you pledge and promise to stop drawing cartoons and designs that carry political clout and would show me and check with me every design you make before you post it, and if you promise you wouldn’t do any work and activities outside the university, then I could possibly allow you to enroll in classes,” Atena wrote to Khazali.
“But as to my asylum case” Atena continued, “I will remain in Iran as long as I live and would accept the hardship and pain of its jails and solitaries… for me the best and the most beautiful things come down to just the word ‘home’”.

Atena Farghadani was first arrested back in Sept, 2014 for drawing caricatures of Iranian regime parliament members as animals who had approved and authorized misogynist laws. The idea behind those laws came from the Supreme Leader himself.
Miss. Farghadani was release on bail after two months. After her freedom, Atena posted a video on the YouTube. The subject of the video was how the Iranian regime abuse and harass women in prisons. She was later rearrested in Dec. 2015 and was charged with “collaboration against the regime’s security”, “propaganda against the regime” and “insulting the Supreme Leader, the President and members of the Parliament.” She was sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in jail in Ward 2 of the IRGC section of the notorious Evin prison.

Atena won the prize of “the bravest person” on Sept. 5, 2015 from the “International network in defense of the rights of cartoonists.”
On Oct. 6, 2015, in a statement issued by the chairwoman of the women’s commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Ms. Sarvnaz Cheetsaz condemned the bogus and ridiculous charges brought against Miss Farghadani and her lawyer and called on all international organizations, the rights of women and the rights of expression groups to act immediately to free this young Iranian artist.