Shaparak Shajarizadeh once believed in the potential for change in Iran but is now so despondent she is calling for a boycott of Friday's parliamentary elections.
"The Iranian people lost their hopes... I was among those who had some hopes. But now it is like choosing between bad and worse," the 44-year-old women's rights campaigner told AFP in Geneva, where she was attending an annual conference for human rights activists.
Shajarizadeh said the supposed political choice in Iran between reformist and conservative politicians was like picking between "two faces of the same coin".
Thousands of reformist and moderate candidates are in any case being barred from contesting the elections -- something that critics say could turn the vote into a choice between conservatives and ultra-conservatives.
Iranians "lost their hopes," particularly after a bloody crackdown last year on fuel-price protests, she said.
Shajarizadeh calls President Hassan Rohani, who was first elected in 2013 and again in 2017 and was once seen as a possible force for change, a "so-called reformer".
During her visit to Geneva, Shajarizadeh received a prize for her defense of women's rights in Iran but she talks about herself as an ordinary person whose life changed completely when she decided to join the protest.
She was arrested three times and beaten for her defiance.
Shajarizadeh decided to run away, crossing the mountains into Turkey on foot. She now lives in Toronto in Canada with her husband and their 11-year-old son.
