For Dr. Zeynab Soleimani, medicine was never merely a profession; it was a sacred promise to protect the most vulnerable. As a pediatrician in the historic city of Isfahan, she spent her days tending to sick children, reassuring anxious parents, and safeguarding fragile young lives. In every clinic and hospital ward where she worked, her hands were instruments of comfort and healing.
In January 2026, as nationwide protests swept through the streets of Isfahan and security forces answered unarmed youths with live ammunition and metal birdshot, that oath was put to the ultimate test. Wounded teenagers and young men—terrified that entering state-monitored hospitals would mean immediate arrest by intelligence agents waiting in emergency rooms—had nowhere to turn as they bled from gunshot and pellet wounds.
Dr. Soleimani did not look away. Refusing to surrender her conscience to fear, the pediatrician treated the injured, carefully extracting metal pellets and bullets from young bodies so they might survive the night. She asked for no recognition; she simply did what every healer is sworn to do when human life hangs in the balance.
To a regime that views mercy itself as an act of rebellion, saving a protester's life was an unforgivable crime. In April 2026, security forces arrested Dr. Soleimani and locked her behind the walls of Isfahan's Dowlatabad Prison. For seven months, judicial authorities have held her in complete legal limbo without a single court hearing, isolating her in prolonged solitary confinement designed to shatter her mind and spirit.
The toll of that isolation has been devastating. Cut off from her patients, her family, and the outside world, Dr. Soleimani's health deteriorated so severely under solitary interrogation that prison authorities were forced to transfer her three separate times to Farabi Psychiatric Hospital in Isfahan. Yet each time, rather than releasing her to heal, agents dragged her back into the cells of Dowlatabad Prison.
Today, a doctor who spent her life healing Isfahan's children remains locked in the dark simply because she refused to let wounded youths bleed in the street. Her stethoscope has been replaced by prison walls, yet her humanity remains unbroken—a quiet indictment of a state that fears a healer's hands as much as a protester's voice.
WHAT YOU CAN DO ON :
Donate any amount and remember her name: Zeynab Soleimani.
Defend the right to heal: Advocate for the protection of doctors and medical neutrality in Iran.
Demand justice for imprisoned healers: Use the hashtag #FreeZeynabSoleimani to call for global attention and release.
Let no woman be punished for healing a child.
