FiLiA Discusses #FreeNazanin Action on BBC Women's Hour
By Freya
Following the BBC Woman’s Hour’s exclusive Interview with Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe - during which she gave thanks to the thousands of ordinary women who supported the campaign to free her - I was invited, along with Linda Grove who created the Nazanin Garden on Hampstead Heath, to chat to Emma Barnett about the impact of the FiLiA Solidarity Action to #FreeNazanin.
On December 20th FiLiA launched the Women4Nazanin Solidarity Action, an ongoing relay of fasting to raise awareness and show Nazanin just how much support she has from the sisterhood. Maryam Namazie and Lisa-Marie Taylor took the first turn, followed by Pragna Patel, Sophie Walker, Vaishnavi Sundar, Mandy Sanghera, and - by the time Nazanin was released - 88 women from around the world had fasted.
Since the launch was covered in the Guardian, we knew there would be a bit of interest, but we were gobsmacked to wake up to hundreds of emails and countless WhatsApp messages! That night, as we joined Richard Ratcliffe, his family, and supporters of the FreeNazanin campaign, we were able to share with them that 500 women had already signed up to fast. By the time we went to bed that night, it was over 700. On day four with Vaishnavi Sundar picking up the baton in India, we reached 1000.
Women from around the world joined our action and shared stories of why they felt compelled to take part. So many mothers spoke of how awful just the idea of being separated from their children was, let alone the reality. Each day a new woman emailed her MP and demanded that our government do something - anything - to bring her home. We expected this action to continue for some time -we had women signed up until the end of March 2025! But thankfully, just 86 days later, we were able to tell the remaining 1,087 women that they didn’t need to fast: Nazanin was coming home.
Listen to the clip below, or visit BBC Sounds for the full episode (transcript below):
Transcript
Emma Barnet (EB) interviews Freya Papworth (FP) on behalf of FiLiA and Linda Grove (LG) about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
EB: When Nazanin was arrested in Iran in April 2016, her husband Richard mounted a tireless campaign to free her including twice going on hunger strike and many joined him. And you heard Nazanin wanted to pay tribute to in particular, ordinary women who supported her cause.
Today I am joined by 2 of those women, a retired primary school teacher Linda Grove who has been actively campaigning on behalf of Nazanin since 2016 and Freya Papworth from the women’s liberation organisation FiLiA who organised a 24 hour fasting relay hunger strike.
A warm welcome to both of you.
Linda, I know you’ve heard our conversation and what Nazanin had to say about what happened and that she wanted to thank people like you. I wonder what your reaction was to that?
LG: I think we are all so proud of Nazanin and Richard and the whole family, the way they have had such dignity during this whole period while Nazanin has been in jail and it’s just a minor thing that we as campaigners have done to keep the story going. We’ve also been so supported by a local newspaper, The Ham and High, which at the time the editor was Emily Banks who organised a march to Downing Street.
EB: You live in the area of North London. We’re getting a lot of messages about Nazanin and why other people campaigned on behalf of others and what it is about their story that gets them in. Was it for you that she was a local woman?
LG: For me and I think for many more, it was the fact that we’re women, we’re mothers and we’re wives and we just couldn’t imagine what this family were going through.
EB: and that was what connected you to her story. So the local editor of the local paper organised a march to Downing Street early on. Did you go on that march?
LG: Yes and we presented a letter to Boris Jonson to request the release of Nazanin. We also had Tom Conti with us.
EB: The Actor? He’s a local as well. Other people coming along and better known faces always help with publicity don’t they?
LG: Absolutely.
EB: Let me bring in Freya at this point. How did you get involved with some of the campaigning?
FP: I’d been watching the story like so many people up and down the country for years and really did think she was going to come home when she was released initially from that first sentence. I couldn’t believe the 2nd sentence got applied and had been thinking: what can I do, I’m just one person, just little old me, what can we do to effect any sort of change or show solidarity. It was actually Margaret Owen who inspired us. She continued Richard’s hunger strike herself.
EB: We actually had her on the programme. She’s a very good speaker as well.
FP: Absolutely. At FiLiA we have a podcast where we talk to interesting women and we interviewed her while she was on hunger strike, I was listening and I heard her say ‘we need more people, we need to pass on this baton’ she said ‘we need a relay of people doing this’ and I thought, that’s something we can do, we can do that.
EB: There was concern about people’s health, especially Margaret’s doing this.
FP: Absolutely. At first, we thought, can you do a couple of weeks, that’s a really big thing to commit to and then the idea of fasting for a day, such a small thing that anyone can do but creates such a big wave across the globe even, we had women from around the globe, from India, from America, people everywhere. They really saw how easy and simple it was to do something that would show solidarity and hopefully make a difference.
EB: For you, of course, there’s the brute reality of diplomacy, there’s the money, the home office hasn’t made that formal link. I was very struck by Nazanin because she has had to learn a lot of this afterwards because she wasn’t here, I was very struck by how she is so moved by it and how important both of your actions and other people who have done this, meant to her. And it meant an enormous amount to Richard, you mentioned Richard’s family as well. His job became to keep her name in the News. The advice from the Home office when you are unfortunately in any situation like this, is to do the opposite, to be quiet and let the diplomats do their work and here he was mounting (a campaign) I remember going to his flat to do an interview and it was just filled with placards and stones and all these things that people had done.
What was the community like around the family?
LG: People were gathering and painting stones. We also made a garden in front of the Royal Free hospital so people were planting plants for Nazanin and we were putting up information about the story, what was happening to Nazanin, to passers-by.
EB: To keep her in their minds.
LG: Yes, and again like at different times like Christmas time we would have concerts, again we are lucky where we live so we had contact with people in the media who could come and speak, like Jim Broadbent.
EB: Sound like a good area for actors, you’ve got good access.
LG: Exactly. These people were also moved by the plight and story of Nazanin because at the end of the day they were families and we could all identify with it so were very lucky to have Dame Janet Suzman the list goes on, Emma Thompson supported the campaign.
EB: How did you feel as someone who didn’t know her, as someone who had been campaigning, how did you feel when you heard that she was home, that she had been released?
LG: Absolutely joyous. In fact, I didn’t listen to the News properly and I hoped into the car and drove to Heathrow Airport thinking she was going to pop out there. I got to the enquiry desk and just said: Which flight is Nazanin Ratcliffe coming in on? There was blank, nobody knew a thing, until a friend text me and said she’s going to a military airport so I went home again.
EB: We did actually have a text from Jude yesterday who was about to complain, she lives near Brizenorton and she thought her roof was about to come off because the flight was so low over it and then she heard on the World Service that it was Nazanin and then thought – I’m not going to complain now – and was extremely happy that she was home now.
Have you met her?
LG: No I haven’t.
EB: That’s not part of it for you is it?
LG: No it’s not. It’s the fact that we could identify with that family with what they’re going through. Losing your child, that’s dreadful. And the dignity of Richard with the way he campaigned.
I think for many people who came for the hunger strikes, people came from up and down the country, just to have their photograph taken with him and to say I’m thinking about you, I’m supporting you. That gave him and the family courage to carry on and they knew people were thinking about them.
We also organised for cards and letters to come to ‘Richard Ratcliffe, The Pavement, the Iranian Embassy’
EB: Can I just pay tribute to our post services, I’m not advising you to do this, a testament to the British public and determination, they just put her name on it and ‘ I don’t know where she lives, London’ and it does reach her. I didn’t know that about Richard when he was outside the foreign office with letters saying ‘Richard Ratcliffe to the Pavement’ extraordinary. Let me pay tribute to our postal service.
I’ll ask you the same question Freya, where were you and how did you feel when you heard she was coming home?
FP: I was at home, I had started work for the day, I got a WhatsApp message and honestly, I couldn’t believe it. We had women signed up to fast up until November 2025. I had been imagining telling some of these women, you don’t need to fast anymore, to tell over a thousand women, you don’t need to do this, it was absolutely mind-blowing.
EB: How did you feel about some of what she had to say yesterday?
FP: It was incredibly moving, horrified at what she went through. No one should go through that. No woman should be separated from her child, breastfeeding her child and have her child used in that way against her. No family should be separated like that.
EB: It’s a tale of survival as much as anything else, especially with the first 9 months, being in solitary confinement and the light never being off and her being claustrophobic. She talks about being blindfolded. There was a lot she shared and also a lot she can’t share.
FP: Absolutely. And I felt, listening to her, women across the globe, for whatever reason, are often put in these situations where male power and male dominance affects us so viscerally and even though they’re worlds apart in stories, as a survivor of male violence, you just listen to that story and think: I understand, I see you, we stand with you.
EB: She did talk about the fact her life for the last six years had been controlled by male power and very much defined by that. As the conversation came to a close she really wanted to share her gratitude to people like you.