While protest movements and demands for rights continue to surge in various aspects of work and social life across Iran, and the regional policies of the Islamic Republic have reached their most humiliating collapse, the regime has simultaneously escalated the execution of death sentences in its prisons without interruption. Unable to silence the voices of people whose livelihoods and most basic individual and social rights have been taken hostage, the regime seeks to maintain control through a policy of intimidation via executions, aiming to preserve its shaky foundations for a little longer.
Although most executions target those convicted in ordinary courts, political prisoners are also executed from time to time among them. This is an attempt by the regime to test society’s tolerance for its atrocities. However, the uprisings of Winter 2017, Autumn 2019, and the revolutionary “Jina” movement have clearly shown that not only have fear and intimidation lost their grip on discontented citizens, but anger, awareness, and solidarity among people sharing the same fate are steadily growing across all dimensions of society.
Official statistics indicate that the Islamic Republic executed at least 953 people in 2024 by hanging alone. Among them, around 33 were women, and a total of 8 were political prisoners. Additionally, approximately 96 Kurdish and 101 Baluch citizens were executed under various pretexts within the past year. Among the names of those executed are minors who were under 18 at the time of their alleged crimes. Among all the countries that still enforce the death penalty, the Islamic Republic stands out as the only government to have executed “juvenile offenders.” According to Amnesty International, Iran has been recognized as the world’s largest executioner of “juvenile offenders” over the past 45 years.
The Fight Against the Death Penalty: “No to Execution Tuesdays” Campaign
One of the influential fronts in the struggle to abolish the death penalty is the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign, involving weekly hunger strikes by political prisoners to protest the increase and continuation of executions in Iran. This movement, initiated in Iranian prisons in February 2024, has now entered its 38th week. The political prisoners involved demand the abolition of the death penalty as an inhumane and irreversible punishment, regardless of the charges or motives of those sentenced to death. So far, prisoners from 28 facilities across Iran have joined this campaign.
The Right to Life: A Fundamental Human Right
The right to life is one of the most fundamental human rights and should not be subjected to political or ideological pressures under any circumstances. Yet, the violation of this basic right coincided with the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran. The regime has used the death penalty as a deliberate and systematic tool to eliminate political opponents, social dissenters, and victims of its oppressive capitalist system. The death penalty has always been one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic’s governance to intimidate the people.
Initially, this atrocity began with the execution of the leaders of the deposed monarchy, who were detained in prisons by the newly established Islamic regime. However, it quickly expanded to encompass political activists and regime opponents across Iran. The re-arrest and subsequent execution of dozens of prominent figures freed from SAVAK prisons by the people’s uprising began in the spring of 1979. Executions of activists and leaders of the Turkmen Sahra protests, widespread executions in cities throughout Kermanshah, Kurdistan, and West Azerbaijan provinces under the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini and carried out by the infamous judge Khalkhali, and the executions of women, students, workers, and intellectuals opposed to the Islamic regime paint a grim portrait of the newly established regime’s history.
Mass Executions and Systematic Repression in the 1980s
With mass executions, street massacres, and brutal torture in prisons during the early 1980s, the Islamic Republic crushed the Iranian Revolution, which had been aimed at achieving freedom and a better life. The killings peaked with the massacre of thousands of prisoners in the aftermath of the Islamic Republic’s failed goals during the Iran-Iraq War. Within two months, thousands of prisoners lost their lives. This reality underscores that the Islamic Republic has consistently used state-sanctioned executions over 46 years to instill fear among the people and preserve its absolute power.
Despite its claim until a year ago to influence five Middle Eastern capitals, the Islamic Republic now clings to its only remaining tools—terror, execution, imprisonment, and torture—to maintain its grip on power. However, the people’s underlying hatred of this oppressive regime has never been extinguished. Today, the flames of struggle and resistance erupt from every corner.
