Execution is a medieval, vengeful, inhumane punishment. The regime’s relentless executions cannot silence the voice of humanity and the calls of the dispossessed masses for justice!
Statement of the Democratic Organisation of Iranian Women
On the eve of October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty, let us raise our voices ever more loudly against the use of inhumane death sentences and against the silent deaths of prisoners!
Over the past few days, dozens of prisoners have been hanged by order of the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic in various cities of Iran. Medieval death sentences are issued summarily and carried out en masse at a time when the theocratic regime is sinking deeper into the quagmire of crises with each passing day. It is as if the regime intends to extract the price of all its failures and structural, self-made crises from the ordinary people and the working class of our homeland, and the defenceless prisoners across Iran. For example, on Saturday, October 4, 2025, the Judiciary announced the execution of seven political prisoners— defenceless detainees who were hanged, despite flaws in their cases and without the knowledge of their families or lawyers. In recent days, the media also reported that the regime’s kangaroo courts have issued death sentences for Nasimeh Eslam-Zehi and her husband, Arsalan Sheikhi.¹
The worsening economic situation, the rampant inflation produced by anti-people economic policies, alongside the back-breaking poverty of the masses and the looming super-crises of water shortages, power outages, and the drying up of dams and lakes—coupled with the long-standing, unjust sanctions imposed by imperialism—have made life for our people, especially the lowest economic strata of society, catastrophically difficult and leading to the intensification of their struggles.
The popular struggle in the form of peaceful protests by workers, retirees, nurses, writers, journalists, and labor and civil activists, and teachers, during the period of the so-called “National Accord” government, have been met with widespread repression. The government claims the name “accord,” yet it continues the same catastrophic, neoliberal policies as before. Mohammad Habibi, spokesperson for the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, told the Emtedad website that in the administration of the current president Pezeshkian “there has been no fundamental change in the treatment [of activists]; in fact, the repression has grown broader and more systematic… There has been no foundational change in educational policies, and the state of freedom for trade-union activity is no better than before” (October 5, 2025).
The reality is that our people oppose both the bullying, aggression, and unjust sanctions of imperialist powers—which target the people’s present and future livelihoods—and the medieval regime that has brought our homeland to the brink of the current disastrous economic collapse. Thus, they struggle to bring about fundamental change in the country.
Consequently, in the face of the growing struggles of the people, the regime has turned to its habitual tool: intensifying repression throughout society—from issuing and implementing death sentences, even for detainees of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement on pretexts such as “spying for Israel,” to the deliberate violation of prisoners’ “right to health,” which has repeatedly led to their silent deaths in prison. The latest example of this deliberate neglect resulted in the death of a young worker named Somayeh Rashidi in Qarchak Prison (Varamin). Somayeh was arrested while writing slogans against the regime in the impoverished Javadiyeh neighborhood of south Tehran. During her arrest, she was punched and kicked in the head, face, legs, and abdomen; her head was slammed against a wall; and one officer sat on her chest. In prison, whenever she went to the infirmary seeking care for her pain, she was told she was “faking it,” and instead she was given sedatives.
The state killing of Somayeh is a systematic, flagrant breach of human-rights obligations regarding the prisoners’ “right to health” in detention. This is the third death that has occurred in just recent days in the women’s Qarchak Prison.² The silent deaths of women—especially women imprisoned for ordinary offenses—and their children, women doomed by social ills (particularly ills normalized by the Islamic Republic), often go unreported.³
One Human Rights organization wrote: “On January 11, 2025, a prisoner named Farzaneh Bijanipour, who was held in Ward 6 of Qarchak Women’s Prison, died due to the prison doctor’s refusal to provide adequate medical care. She went to the infirmary with chills and feeling unwell, but the prison doctor said she was faking it. Her cellmates took her back again in bad condition, but the prison doctor only gave her a painkiller.”
On Friday, October 3, 2025, Zeinab Jalalian, a Kurdish political prisoner serving a life sentence, was returned to prison only 24 hours after undergoing fibroid surgery in a hospital in Yazd, without completing her treatment. This transfer reflects deliberate neglect, a calculated, systematic action intended to violate the “right to health”—one of the fundamental rights of prisoners.
In addition to the “silent deaths” of prisoners by preventing treatment and serious medical care, the wave of executions has surged especially after the military attacks by Israel and USA (the so-called 12-day war).
On the eve of the “World Day Against the Death Penalty,” progressive forces and civil and trade institutions in Iran, once again join political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, in campaigns calling for an end to the regime’s infernal execution machine.
Right now, besides large numbers of those accused of ordinary crimes, dozens of political prisoners—including “Vahid Beni Amrian” and “Ehsan Afrashteh,” and brave women such as “Sharifeh Mohammadi,” “Pakhshan Azizi,” and “Varisheh Moradi”—have been sentenced to death by the regime’s medieval courts on baseless charges, and the threat of death looms over them at any moment. In the 89th statement of the “Tuesdays of ‘No’ to Execution” campaign, on Tuesday, October 6, 2025, the prisoners stressed:
“We all know that executions in Iran are not merely a punishment; they are a tool to intimidate and terrorize a society living under explosive conditions. In this government’s view, every protest and every protester must be cowed by execution and imprisonment. That is why today ‘No to Execution’ is among the slogans of all protesters—from teachers and retirees to workers and students.”
While 113 countries in the world have removed the death penalty from their laws, this violation of the natural human right to life—namely “execution”—is expanding in our homeland under conditions in which those condemned to death are generally denied access to fair trials and due process. Their prosecutions begin with physical and psychological torture, forced confessions obtained under torture, and sometimes threats against their innocent families—then continue with sham, minutes-long court sessions behind closed doors, without a lawyer present or with a court-appointed lawyer selected by the judiciary—ending in death sentences.
According to human-rights sources, since October 2024, more than 1,695 people have been executed in Iran. In September alone, at least 171 people were executed. This number is double the executions of September of the previous year, showing the unprecedented expansion of the wave of executions in Iran.
On the 44th anniversary of the adoption of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the Democratic Organization of Iranian Women firmly believes that execution is a medieval, vengeful, inhumane act. However, by carrying out death sentences, the voice of the deprived masses seeking justice and the voice of humanity cannot be silenced, nor can human dignity and worth be trampled.
Together with the grieving mothers and families and all progressive and patriotic forces, we deeply believe that we must:
– Remove the death penalty from Iran’s penal code;
– Immediately annul all death sentences;
– Immediately and unconditionally free all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience.
Let us broaden the struggle for the right to life and against the “silent deaths” of prisoners!
No to execution!
Long live life!
Democratic Organization of Iranian Women
October 8, 2025
Footnotes:
1) Nasimeh Eslam-Zehi, 41, mother of two daughters named Aisha and Tasnim. When their mother was arrested, Aisha was about two years old; she was separated from her mother and the family was told the child had been transferred to welfare services. Through persistent efforts, Nasimeh’s family managed to obtain custody of Aisha. In April–May 2024, while in detention, Nasimeh gave birth to her second child, Tasnim, in Evin Prison. The mother and newborn were held for 40 days in a dark, suffocating solitary cell and then transferred to the quarantine ward. Detaining a newborn with its mother in a dark, suffocating cell—regardless of the regime’s claims to morality—inflicts immeasurable harm on a child’s delicate body and mind (Based on HRANA report, “Verification of the identities of those sentenced to death in the moharebeh case,” October 5, 2025).
2) According to human-rights sources, “Sudabeh Asadi” and “Jamileh Azizi”—prisoners with ordinary charges—also died due to “state killing” in Qarchak Prison within the last ten days.
3) After the missile attack on Evin Prison, political prisoners—especially women transferred to Qarchak—have faced compounded pressures such as visitation bans, arbitrary solitary confinement, new cases being opened, extremely poor nutrition, dire sanitary conditions, and overcrowded quarantine with various illnesses and pests like ticks and bedbugs. Qarchak Prison is also a stark symbol of the violation of the rights of women and imprisoned mothers whose children remain in the dangerous, unsanitary prison environment until age two, after which they are separated and transferred to welfare centers. These mothers have no possibility to pursue their children’s fate. Children born in this prison are undocumented and, from the very start of life, trapped in a cycle of deprivation and injustice. (Iran Human Rights’ report: “Qarchak Prison: Hell for Women and Children” December 10, 2024)
