Dawn Images

Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai has expressed her support for the women and girls of Iran after widespread protests against the country’s hardline regime continued for over two weeks.

The activist said the protests — which began over economic woes and the rapid devaluation of the Iranian Rial — “cannot be separated from the long-standing, state-imposed restrictions on girls’ and women’s autonomy, in all aspects of public life, including education.”

Iranian girls, she said, “demand a life with dignity”.

Yousafzai said the people of Iran had warned the world about the repression “at great personal risk” and that “their voices have been silenced for decades”. The restrictions placed on women, she wrote, exist within a larger system of “gendered control” with “segregation, surveillance, and punishment”.

The women of Iran, the activist said, “demand their voices be heard and the right to determine their political future”. That future, she asserted, must include “the leadership of Iranian women and girls” and “not external forces or oppressive regimes”.

Yousafzai ended her post by declaring, “I stand with the people and girls of Iran in their call for freedom and dignity. They deserve to determine their own future.”

The activist has spoken about Iran before, most recently in December when she echoed the Norwegian Nobel Committee in denouncing the arrest of fellow laureate Narges Mohammadi.

She also shared Amnesty International’s condemnation of the UK for arresting Greta Thunberg as the Swedish activist protested against Israeli actions in Gaza.

Yousafzai has taken an increasing interest in the Middle East in recent months, with her Malala Fund pledging $100,000 to help Palestinian refugees in September. The organisation has since promised another $300,000 for girls’ education and emergency relief in Gaza, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.