Even as the Islamic theocracy of Iran is being threatened by the U.S.-backed genocidal Israel, it continues to execute its own population at a harrowing rate. On October 2, Iran’s mullah regime finished firing a barrage of missiles at Israel while hanging seven prisoners in Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj, known for its waterfalls just 26 miles outside of Iran’s capital Tehran. Two days later, iranwire.com wrote, “The Islamic Republic authorities have executed at least ten more prisoners over the past two days.” The pace of executions is dizzying, even as the numbers are often underestimations due to difficulty of verification under this regime. The continual, determined resistance of Iran’s prisoners is shining a light on the possibility of another, better future.

In 2023, Amnesty International reported 853 executions in Iran. Ghezel Hesar reportedly had the highest recorded number of executions within that horrific rate. It is Iran’s largest, and severely overcrowded state prison. In early 2024, it became renowned by its prisoners boldly initiating the “Tuesdays No to Execution” hunger strike political movement.

An October 1 Instagram post by Burn the Cage/Free the Birds organization based in Europe gives the following perspective:

What has always made the issue of executions so serious is that it is fundamental to the functioning of this government. This means that whatever the charges against the accused, the ultimate goal of executions is to intensify repression. And, as we have seen, the number of executions has significant correlation with the domestic and international situation, when [the IRI] is unable to resolve problems of direction, it takes revenge, and the most readily available means is to erect more nooses. In other words, given their current necessity, they’re taking even more revenge on prisoners and death row inmates in order to conceal their impotence in international affairs, and to threaten and intimidate domestically…

The prisoner-led weekly strike is now into its 36th week, spreading to 22 different prisons across Iran as of Tuesday, October 1, 2024. One of the prisons participating in these weekly hunger strikes is Evin Prison in Tehran, especially the undaunted women’s ward where 2023 Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi is imprisoned. On September 24, as the United Nations General Assembly was welcoming and legitimizing Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian, 45 women in the dungeon of Evin went on hunger strike to demand “a halt to executions and the release of political and ideological prisoners.” Their voice was royally ignored by the so-called international community (i.e., imperialist, capitalist states) and their pliant media. Political prisoner Golrokh Iraee in a post on her Instagram signed by “a group of leftist women in Evin” indicted the UN’s overall, historical role saying: 

…despite the fact that the UN Fact-Finding mission was not allowed to enter Iran to investigate the 2022 massacres—the United Nation held a memorial ceremony following the death of [President Ebrahim] Raisi, the same Raisi who had ordered the killings!... 

If we the Iranian people, despite the cost of decades of fighting against dictatorship, have not yet achieved our goals, it is because of your recognition of governments like this one, the governments to whom you have given democratic cover and whose actual deeds have received your stamp of approval, while those who always pay the price are the people.

Join in Urgent Support Needed Worldwide for the Hunger Strikers

In late August, in a summer that saw a surge in executions by Iran’s misogynistic rulers and death sentences issued to two women activists (Sharifeh Mohammadi, Pakhshan Azizi), 60 human rights organizations worldwide issued a joint statement of solidarity with the prisoners’ hunger strike “No to Execution Tuesdays.” A few weeks later, nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates announced similar support for the hunger strikes in a letter that said:

We, the signatories of this statement, declare our support for the campaign against executions on Tuesday and call for an end to this inhumane punishment in Iran.

Among the nine are two Nobel laureates who had also signed the IEC’s Emergency Appeal—Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams. 

While these statements and events are extremely important in putting this matter into the public square, much more is needed. Iran’s execution surge has not been widely covered by any mainstream press, in particular NOT in the U.S. It is up to the grassroots to get the word out and not let these prisoners be murdered by Iran’s mullah regime. More protests and statements are needed from around the world. To further cite the stakes of this struggle from the above Burn the Cage Instagram:

We are issuing an alarm about the situation of prisoners who are under death sentences. In the coming weeks, there is a possibility of executions and death sentences increasing, for the above mentioned reasons, and those prisoners are the first to pay the price for the regional failures and domestic weaknesses of the theocratic tyrants that rule our country. 

Therefore, we ask all freedom-loving and critical thinking human beings, all human rights activists, domestic and international to be the voice of the prisoners who have been sentenced to death. Do not stand by in silence and allow them to be executed. 

An alarm must be sounded about the vicious targeting of Narges Mohammadi by Iran’s regime. She was physically assaulted in the Evin women prison yard sit-in, and has endured repeated denial of critical medical care. On her social media administered by her family in Paris, there is this alert: “In the past month, prison authorities have prevented Narges Mohammadi from leaving prison to undergo angiography.” This is a direct threat to the life of this lifelong and determined prisoner of conscience, and protest of her treatment must be expressed with urgency.

Burn the Cage will be hosting a “No to Execution Tuesdays” solidarity event on October 11, 2024 (details TBA at our website). So far, announced speakers are Hamid Narviei (activist on matters related to Baluchestan, Iran); Somayeh Kargar (Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist); Sara Sadighi (activist and analyst on queer matters and an ex-political prisoner); Shoresh Karimi (Communist Party of Iran in Cologne, Germany); Atefeh Huseini (women rights activist and ex-political prisoner under Taliban rule in Afghanistan).

The continual, determined resistance of Iran’s prisoners is shining a light on the possibility of another, a better future other than an Islamic religious theocratic nightmare masked as “axis of resistance.” The question asks itself—“resistance” to what? The IRI is NOT a genuine resistance to capitalism-imperialism in the interest of the people, of Iran, in the region or the world. The “No to Execution Tuesdays” prisoner-led movement in Iran should be firmly supported as real resistance to an oppressive regime. 

Find creative ways to raise these demands in your school, campus, church, community groups—online or on the ground: STOP EXECUTIONS IN IRAN! FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! STOP U.S./ISRAELI WAR THREATS AND MOVES AGAINST IRAN! LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!