Message from political prisoner Hossein Shanbehzadeh from Evin Prison to the Kokkini

10/10/2025

Freedom of Expression Is No Act of Grace

My greetings to all who seek freedom across the world—especially to my fellow sufferers living in the shadow of tyranny.

For years I have worked to uphold my unshakable belief in absolute freedom of expression—not through slogans or manifestos, but through practice, persistence, and, more often than not, humour. What ultimately brought me severe punishment and utterly baseless charges was nothing more than placing a single “dot” in the wrong place—or perhaps the right place, depending on your point of view.

I still believe that absolute freedom of expression is an inherent human right, not a privilege granted by any person or government out of kindness. I preserve this right not only for myself and those who share my thoughts, but also for my fiercest opponents. As a great thinker once said: if you don’t believe in freedom for your enemies, you don’t believe in freedom at all.

Especially, in my beloved homeland, Iran, I regard the Mulla’s anachronistic rule as too petty to strip me off my right to free expression—even with their most infamous tool of repression, the prison of Evin.

I know that my share and weight in human history is infinitesimal—and you know this claim has nothing to do with humility. If I have managed to secure even the tiniest bit of freedom of expression—say, the freedom to place a simple dot wherever we wish—in a thoroughly authoritarian regime with a totally totalitarian government, and if I have earned it at the cost of my freedom and much torture, then I believe I have, in some small measure, repaid my debt to the advancement of humanity’s right to speak freely. Not everyone is destined to be a Martin Luther King.

As an infinitesimal being, I remain aware of the fact that the dot itself is a symbol of being infinitesimal—and yet, without the dot, no sentence ever finds its end.

Once more, my greetings to the fighters for freedom.

With respect,

Hossein Shanbehzadeh, the Prisoner of the Dot

Hossein Shanbehzadeh (born September 8th, 1988, in Khormoj, Iran) is an Iranian writer, editor, and translator known for his sharp wit, outspoken social criticism, and unwavering defence of free expression. He first gained attention online under the pseudonym “The Unicorn Editor” on X (formerly Twitter), before later writing under his real name, where he became one of the most candid voices challenging censorship and authoritarianism in Iran.

In June 2024, Shanbehzadeh was arrested after replying to a post from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, with a single dot — a punctuation mark missing from the original post. From the editorial point of view, it was simply a correction, yet that tiny gesture quickly went viral, earning more than twice as many likes as the leader’s post. What followed was a storm of repression: he was accused of “propaganda for Israel,” “insulting sanctities,” and “anti-regime activity,” tortured into a forced confession under threats to his six-year-old niece, and sentenced by Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court to 12 years in prison, of which five are enforceable. Now known as the “Dot Prisoner,” Shanbehzadeh stands as a symbol of how, in a totally totalitarian system, even an infinitesimal mark can be treated as an act of defiance.