Roya Hakakian is an Iranian Jewish woman and author of Journey from the Land of No about her experiences growing up in revolutionary Iran. Today she writes movingly about Akbar Ganji’s hunger strike in an Iranian prison. He is dying in order to bring notice to his calls for a free referendum in Iran to end the rule of the Supreme Ayatollah.

The threat of a nuclear standoff with Tehran is, by most accounts, at least 10 years away, but the democratic antidote to that possibility is perishing as I write. A prominent investigative journalist, Ganji has been in jail since 2000 for putting out a slew of articles, books and lectures that amount to a comprehensive one-man campaign against Iran’s ruling clerics. From prison, he has sent out a daring manifesto containing the five words no one else in the country has dared to utter: “The supreme leader must go!” — a declaration all the more powerful for being a dramatic echo of the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary war cry against the shah in the 1970s.

Now, Ganji is in the end stages of a second hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. Yet even with his blood pressure falling and clots accumulating in his veins, he still stands as the most formidable challenge to Iran’s theocracy in 26 years.

The courage and dedication of this man are awe-inspiring. He seems to be in his last days of his hunger strike, but his martyrdom will be an example for all in Iran who have hope of reform.