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Where’s the outrage about this civilian slaughter?
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7 min
The same people in this country who broke themselves into pieces over the war in Gaza have been invisible these past few weeks. Picture: Supplied
12:00AMJanuary 17, 2026.
Updated 11:20AMJanuary 18, 2026
Blood oozes from her mouth, staining her teeth bright red as it dribbles across her swollen lips, down her chin and on to her shirt. The bright yellow fabric is soaked in crimson. She strides along, one arm raised definitely to the sky turning this way and that, as if to make sure anyone and everyone can see her.
“I’m not afraid,” she shouts. “I’ve been dead for 47 years.”
Forty-seven years is no random number. Forty-seven years ago this week, Iran was overtaken over by a violent, fundamentalist Islamic regime, the definition of extremism. A vibrant, colourful society was plunged into the darkness. It was taken into the grasp of a murderous ideology that hates women, seeks to subjugate and control, and believes wholeheartedly in the destruction of the West as a culture and society. Everyday Aussies who live everyday Aussie lives? We’d be swinging from a crane at dawn if they had their way, women especially.
The Islamic regime in Iran is public executioner No.1, summarily killing more people than any other country. Their crimes? Being gay. Being different. Demanding freedom.
The regime is teetering and like a wounded and cornered beast it has responded with unbridled savagery. Estimates vary, but it’s believed that anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 civilians could have been slaughtered in recent weeks.
Bodies lying on stretchers outside the Forensic Diagnostic and Laboratory Center of Tehran Province in Kahrizak in Iran. Picture: AFP
The silence in response is a condemnation. The betrayal by modern, liberal feminists is especially galling. The same cohort that said “rape is resistance” after October 7 has nothing to say about this uprising. Has had nothing to say about the fact that under the Islamic regime a man can legally prevent his wife from working or travelling. There is no equal pay if a woman can work. There are no laws against domestic violence.
To younger women and teenage girls, once I would have forgiven your silence and ignorance. Tender years can’t be advanced. But in this digital age there is no excuse, you can’t say you didn’t know. Being silent at a time like this is being complicit.
My mind turns back to this older woman with the bloodied face. I find myself wondering what it’s like to have nothing to lose. To have that level of defiance, to know as none of us could ever know that the risk of her actions is death.
“I’m not afraid,” she shouts. I am. I am afraid for her. And all I’m doing is reading about it on the other side of the world.
She’s not alone, this woman with silver hair and fire in her eyes. Millions of Iranians have risen in past weeks at a heartbreaking cost. They are begging the world for help while governments such as our own respond with platitudes. They say: we stand with your courage. Meaningless words without action. As meaningless as words like dialogue and diplomacy, the rinse and repeat favourites of the Albanese government. Were Australia ever to face a threat like this, it would not end well for us.
I’m not afraid. I’ve been dead for 47 years this is the voice of a woman in Iran who is fed up with the Islamic republic.
47 years ago, the Islamic Republic took our rights and turned a nation into hostages.
Today people have nothing left to lose, they rise.
Iran is rising. pic.twitter.com/GAawmynE0C
— Masih Alinejad ðŸ³ï¸ (@AlinejadMasih) January 8, 2026
At the time of writing, there has been another face all over the internet, every news outlet and social media platform. Erfan Soltani, 26, was reported to be facing imminent execution this week for being an “enemy of God”, which is punishable by hanging, although the Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights, a Norway-based non-profit, said later that the order had since been postponed.
Soltani’s fate demands honesty. Unless there’s some kind of miraculous intervention, he could be hanged by a crane in a public place, suffering a slow, violent, terrifying death. A cowardly murder by a cowardly, evil regime.
But he is not in Gaza and he’s not Palestinian. His murderers aren’t Israeli, definitely not Jewish, so no protests for him. No march for humanity.
Erfan Soltani, 26, faced execution for being an ‘enemy of God’, a sentence later postponed, according to the Hengaw Organisation for Human Rights. Picture: Supplied
Nor for Rubina Aminian, who was just 23 and studying fashion design. Her family says her body was found with a gunshot in the back of the head. Her face, too, is all over the internet. She beams at me from the web page on which I’m reading about her. Bright red lipstick frames a wide, joyous smile. Protesters and Iranians in the diaspora are people to be their voice, even from beyond the grave. I’m trying.
Rubina Aminian, 23, was killed in the recent demonstrations in Iran. Picture: Supplied
Initially I had thought this uprising was driven by younger women, a fresh iteration of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement spawned by the 2022 murder of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old was arrested by the regime’s morality police for the crime of leaving her hair uncovered. Witnesses reported that she was smashed to a pulp in the back of the police van. Three days later, she was dead.
The truth is simple. This iteration of Islamic extremism hates women almost as much as it hates Jews; for proof, look no further than the erasure of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. It is distressing reading and it’s happening without a single campus protest, a single act of solidarity from Western liberal feminists.
Those who know say this uprising, this revolution feels different. It has many faces. Men and women, both young and weathered. Those who knew life before the mullahs standing side-by-side with those who have never known what freedom tastes like.
Here in Australia and in the broader West where socialist politics are the prevailing zeitgeist, there is a mighty reckoning afoot as ordinary people are beginning to wake up. I’m hearing it in conversations everywhere.
For me, it’s like a lot of Australians are having a reality check about the global scourge of extremism and its intent towards us.
Last year, the Australian government kicked out the Iranian ambassador. What else could the Prime Minister have done? The Islamic regime in Iran was targeting Australian Jews, in Australia, as part of the broader strategy that is globalising the intifada. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? This is what it looks like in action. Foreign interference. It’s a long game and the Islamic regime is prepared to play it.
Tens of thousands attended the March for Humanity protest over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Picture: Jeremy Piper
Our selective inattention to such tedious matters is like a gateway drug to indifference.
And it’s a mighty red flag that points to this country’s deep moral decay, one that’s born of having had it too good for too long. The blessing and the curse of peace and prosperity.
The same people in this country who broke themselves into pieces over the war in Gaza have been invisible these past few weeks. We all know them. As you’re reading, you’re seeing their faces in your mind’s eye. They had so much to say about Israel. They threw around words such as genocide and apartheid with such confidence. The Iranian regime doesn’t even try to hide its violent, absolutist ideology and its murderous program of executions. It boasts about it. Nobody needs to twist these facts, they are in plain sight.
Here’s what I know. If you spoke up on Gaza but are silent on Iran, you’re a fraud. If you marched against the Israeli government but not against the Islamic regime, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge or through the city you live in, you are a morally bankrupt fraud. If you’ve advocated for the women of Gaza (as I have, many times, including these columns) but said nothing of the women in Iran, you’re a fraud.
Who knows how the next days and weeks will play out. I pray the regime falls, never to rise again. For a people to be free. For those of us like me, living in safety here in Australia, to be able to discern the times we live in and demand better from the people setting our course.