"It’s a punishable crime to be unveiled in public according to the Sharia laws in
Iran.
You get lashes you get jailed and fined.
But more important than this you won't be allowed to get an education from the age of seven.
If you take off your headscarf you won't be allowed to get a job.
You won’t be allowed to live in your own country."
"My campaign was born from a simple picture.
It was a picture of me running in a beautiful street in London.
It was spring, May the trees were full of blossoms.
And I wrote a caption on my picture that every time what I wanted in a free country and I
feel the wind wading through my hair it just reminds me of the time when my hair was like
a hostage in the hands of the Iranian government."
"I asked the women whether they want to share pictures with me, stealthy moments of freedom
with me.
I was bombarded by pictures from them inside Iran being unveiled."
"So I created my Stealthy Freedom page on Facebook which now has more than a million
followers, on Instagram more than a million followers.
And it's all about freedom.
It's all about dignity.
It's all about choice."
"I grew up in a small village which is close to Caspian Sea.
When I get homesick, the only thing that makes me feel home and happy is just going to nature.
Climbing a tree, going to mountain or walking the seaside.
It just reminds me of home."
"Our kitchen in the village are designed for women, because it’s shorter, women are shorter
than men, so I remember I said to my brother, I know this is short for you but there is
a chair, sit down and wash the dishes.
So this picture actually shows that I started my feminism movement, my feminist revolution
from my kitchen.
That is important for women; we have to start being a rebel in our house."
"My mother never had the chance to go to school, to university, never.
She is not even able to read and write, but to me she is the true feminist."
"My father, he stopped talking to me.
He doesn’t support me; he thinks that I am against Islam, against my own country,
that I am betraying my country.
But I think these are all happening because the government really brainwashed people like
my father, otherwise my father loves me."
"When I was a student I got kicked out from my high school, just because of my opinion.
And then I became a journalist, a parliamentary journalist, I got kicked out from the MPs,
because I exposed a corruption.
I became a columnist, then again, because I criticized the president of Iran.
It was just a week before the controversial elections in Iran in 2009 – my car got vandalized
in Iran and two of my journalistic cards were under my vehicle wheel, so that was a message
for me that this is going to happen to you, as well."
"I decided to just leave the country."
"I launched My Stealthy Freedom but after 3 years it was everywhere – so the president
of Iran knew about it, talked about it, all the media around the world, the media inside
Iran, state TV, clerics and I thought, oh my God, now is the time – we have to shift
the online movement to something offline – these people need to identify each other.
In 2017 I decided to pick a day, pick a color, and help these people to identify each other
in public."
"Women on these ‘White Wednesdays’ are lonely soldiers, lonely warriors, I call it
a one person demonstration, because they never have the permission to take the street, they
will be shot, they will be send to prison, they will be tortured, they are brave, they
found their way to protest against oppression."
"This is the time men should get involved in women’s movement.
So I created another campaign, called ‘Men in Hijab’ "
"The government in Iran wants to control society.
Because they know that this generation is not going to keep silent.
They found social media as an alternative media to express themselves, to be loud and
to break the censorship that is why the social media itself is a threat for Islamic Republic
of Iran, so they try to block it.
Because they see this is the main battleground.
And they don’t want to lose the control."
"I have so many dreams, but the biggest one is that one day, women in Iran have the power
to run the country.
My dream is to see women are as equal as men."