A film, an image, an actor's line can be enough to make you want to "feel the wind blowing on the shores of the Caspian Sea" and, suddenly, feel less free. "I can't go to Iran." Virginia Pishbin was 21 years old when the urgency became "explosive". And now, exactly one year after the protests that began with the death of Mahsa Amini, the young Kurd arrested for not wearing the veil correctly and who died in the hands of Tehran's moral police, tells her story before putting on her lab coat and starting the day in the clinic of the ASL of Nuoro where she works as a doctor. «My father had gone away to study. He had chosen Sassari where the Faculty of Agriculture was located, in reality he would have liked to study Sociology but the law did not allow students abroad to receive funds from the family for subjects other than technical ones". He stopped in Sardinia. «He met my mother at university. But in 1979 he returned to participate in the revolution, the one that ousted the Shah. Two years later, with the theocratic regime taking over, he had to leave Iran. Definitely. I was born here."

What do you know about your father's last time in Iran?

«He had participated in the protests of June 1981, there were 500 thousand people in the square, they shot at the demonstrators. The regime has considered the Iranian resistance an enemy of God but religion has nothing to do with it."

Meaning what?

"Islam is an open religion, just look at my home: my Islamic father, my atheist mother, my Catholic grandmother, I am Buddhist."

Was your father a political refugee?

«An exile. He ran away when the raids began."

Were you talking about this at home?

«My father died in 2016 and never pushed me towards Islam or stopped me from approaching it. In 2003, I was the one who decided to participate in a demonstration in Washington: I wanted to get to know the Iranian Resistance up close. Two years later I spent a whole month in Paris and since then I have participated in all the demonstrations, civil and political struggles."

Until he became president of the Young Iranians in Italy.

«Yes, but in fact there are no hierarchies. I met young Iranians in Naples who were shocked at how well I knew Iranian society even though I don't speak Farsi fluently, but in short, I took back my origins. And when I go to Iran that will be my prize."

One year ago the protests began over the death of Mahsa Amini.

"I may be unpopular but when the West notices things it seems like they are starting at that moment, but instead we have been in the streets for 40 years because people are arrested, tortured and killed."

But in 2022 there was an important ruling in Stockholm.

«Yes, Hamid Nouri, a clerical state official, one of the regime's torturers, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1988 he "treated" five thousand prisoners in Gohardasht prison near Tehran. That summer, in just over two and a half months, around 30,000 political prisoners were massacred, among these there were pregnant women, minors, people who had already completed their period of detention and were awaiting release. Based on the religious edict of the then supreme spiritual leader Khomeini they were condemned by the infamous death commissions after a one-minute show trial in which they were asked to renounce the fight against clerical power and membership in the Iranian People's Mojahedin ».

Social media has helped make today's protests visible.

«Yes, but let's not forget that there are thousands of Masha Amini».

But it has become a symbol and this is not negative.

"Of course, also because it serves to remind us that the regime is based on legalized misogyny, it wants women as broodmares, and it is no coincidence that the population has doubled in forty years."

A year later is the flame still burning?

"More than ever. After China, Iran, according to Amnesty International, is the country with the highest number of death sentences in the world. We must be careful, the winds that blow in Iran could reach here too. I am not for war but for the self-determination of peoples. With an association that deals with human rights I would like to organize a great event, after having participated in the United Nations Commission in New York on the condition of women."

Here, women: on the front line.

«Yes and now in a thousand, 50 former presidents, vice presidents, prime ministers, ministers as well as 175 parliamentarians and hundreds of mayors, former parliamentarians, activists, academics, human rights experts and jurists, Nobel prize winners and presidents of non-governmental organizations from several European states, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and the USA are asking the international community to express support for Maryam Rajavi, president of the national council of the Iranian Resistance and her plan for a democratic republic; blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; stand with the courageous women and the Iranian people."

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