When Existence Becomes a Crime

 From Torture and Prison to Execution Within the Family

Author: Gouya Roshan (Guya Aydın )

I do not write these words based on hearsay; I write from a place where body and memory have become one, and memory itself turns into a wound.
This is the policy of a regime, a policy that defines the opponent, restricts them, breaks them, and removes them. History knows this violence; the world does too.
It is bitter and criminal, yet within the logic of power it is recognizable: violence as a tool of control.

But what is happening today is not of that kind.

The killing of people during a march is no longer the suppression of opposition.
It is the crossing of a boundary that, once governments pass it, permanently alters their relationship with society.
Here, the issue is no longer the “position of the opposition”; the very presence of the people becomes the problem.
Nameless bodies, flagless voices, the mere existence of people is interpreted as an existential threat.
And this interpretation is a sign of fear, not of power.

I do not make this distinction lightly. Someone who has experienced prison and torture, and has mourned executions within their own family, knows how violence is categorized.
They know when a government is still “governing,” even if tyrannically… and when it retreats into mere “survival.”
Shooting people during a march is the language of survival, a language that has abandoned legitimacy and only seeks to live through the moment.

This government may remain or may fall; this text does not predict that.
What it records is a moral reality: from this point on, collective memory enters a different phase.
The costs are no longer only political; they become historical.
Names, dates, and images, even if unanswered today—will not be erased from memory.

I am not in Iran, but my heart is with the wounded people.
This solidarity is neither a slogan nor a substitute for action; it is simply a refusal to normalize.
A refusal to say, “It has always been this way.” No, it has not always been this way.
And every time this boundary has been broken, something within society has been broken that is not easily repaired.

If the pen trembles, it is not from weakness; it is from the weight of truth.
I do not write these lines to persuade anyone.
I write to record.
So that tomorrow, when asked when we realized that “this is different,” we can say: the day people were targeted simply for being there.