She was born in Iran and built her life in Afghanistan a woman's rights activist with a voice that frightened the men around her. So her ex-husband threw acid on her face. In the hospital, after the surgeries, she sat with her head shaved doctors had taken skin from her scalp to rebuild her face. She was still bandaged, still bleeding, still healing. But her son was not by her side. He was living with his father. And his father set the condition: if you want to talk to your son, you will do it on a video call so I can see what you've become. She accepted. She needed to hear her child's voice. On that call, her ex-husband looked at her destroyed face and smiled. He said: "Look at you. You've become like a monster. You'll never dare go out in public again people will be terrified when they see you. I dare you. I dare you to go out and talk about women's rights." He thought he had broken her. He thought that face was the end of her. He was wrong. Every scar on her face became a sentence in her speech. They took her beauty so she took his fear and turned it into courage. Today she walks in public with her head high, and she speaks about women's rights louder than ever. He wanted to bury her in shame. Instead, he gave the world a witness. That is why I invited her to our Freedom gala in Poland to dedicate to her the Medal of Freedom I received. Because she is the symbol of resilience itself: the symbol of every woman whose face was burned but whose voice could not be silenced. Thank you, Poland for opening your doors, for giving visas to my delegation of women from Iran, Afghanistan, and Cameroon. We are about to start a global women's rights movement and we will go together, all of us, to the German Parliament very soon. This time, I invited 10 women. In Berlin, we will invite more dissidents. @FahimaSarfaraz

I just learned that he has no mother or father to speak up for him. And now the Islamic Republic wants to hang him. His name is Ilya Ben Rashid. He is a young Iranian protester He has a younger sister. Now he is facing a death sentence. He was arrested during the January 2026 protests in Iran. A Revolutionary Court in Isfahan sentenced him to death on charges of “waging war against God” for allegedly damaging public property. He is being held in Dastgerd Prison. Reports say he was denied a lawyer of his choice. Imagine facing execution for demanding freedom. We must become his voice. We must stop his execution. Say his name. Save Ilya Ben Rashid. #StopExecutionsInIran

Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye in a Islamist terrorist attack. Three brave women from Iran and Afghanistan were blinded under Islamism. I survived three assassination plots of the Islamic Republic on U.S. soil. Now we stand together in Poland with one question: Why?? The moment I learned that I would be receiving an award in Poland and sharing the stage with Salman Rushdie, I reached out to the organizers with one request: Please allow me to bring women who were blinded under Islamic Ideology onto that stage. Because the real award belongs to them. Farideh Salavatipour lost both eyes to pellet gunfire during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. Kosar Eftekhari lost one eye when the Islamic Republic shot her in the face with pellets for demanding freedom. And Fahimeh, from Afghanistan, was blinded when her husband threw acid in her face for defending women’s rights. I want the world to look into their eyes and understand the true cost of normalizing the Islamic Republic, the Taliban, and violent Islamist extremism. Oppression begins with compulsory hijab, lashes, prison cells, and the systematic humiliation of women. It escalates into torture, mass killings, and executions and public lashes or public hanging. And it does not stop at national borders. These regimes and their networks have also threatened, hunted, and plotted to assassinate their opponents abroad. Salman Rushdie is a living symbol of how Islamist terrorists reaches far beyond the borders of dictatorships. He was brutally stabbed on American soil and lost sight in one eye. I have survived three plots to kidnap or assassinate me on US soil and I can testify firsthand that the Islamic Republic and other authoritarian regimes use transnational repression to hunt down and silence their opponents abroad. That is why tonight, I will dedicate my award to brave Freedom Fighters especially these women who were blinded for freedom. Tomorrow, these extraordinary women will have something rare: an entire one-hour panel to tell their own stories. I will have the honor of interviewing them. Too often, the world speaks about survivors. This time, the world must listen to them. We also visited Auschwitz together. Standing there, surrounded by the evidence of unimaginable crimes, one truth became painfully clear: “Never again” must never become an empty slogan. We cannot honor the victims of yesterday while turning our backs on those facing atrocities today. And our solidarity must cross borders. I have also invited a woman from Africa to stand alongside the women of Iran and Afghanistan, to remind the world that sexual violence is still being used as a weapon of war and repression. Different countries, different forms of brutality, but one shared struggle for dignity, equality, and freedom. We cannot expect women facing prison, bullets, acid attacks, rape, and execution to defeat these systems of oppression with their bare hands while the rest of the world stands aside. And here is my message to the world: South Africa’s apartheid did not fall because its victims fought alone. It fell because courageous people inside the country resisted, and the world joined their struggle. In the history Poland gave the world Solidarność. Now the women of Iran Afghanistan and Africa need the world to live up to that word. If the world could unite to help end racial apartheid in South Africa, and end tyranny in Poland, it can unite to end dictatorship everywhere. The time for solidarity is not after the atrocities. It is NOW.