Fahime Robiol
Every morning we obtain information of nameless or nameless people being executed in prisons within the Islamic Republic. Each execution is related to a selected jail: Ahvaz, Evin, Qarchak, Gazelhesar, Raudbar, Ali Ghoudarz, Shiraz, Arak, Qom, Shaare Kordo….
The victims are girls, males, Baluchs, Arabs, Kurds, and Azerbaijanis. They face quite a lot of expenses together with rape, drug trafficking and premeditated homicide. Some girls have been charged with killing their family members on account of the violence they suffered. The victims embody political prisoners, some convicted of spying for Israel based mostly on confessions obtained underneath torture, and others accused of waging “conflict in opposition to God” and spreading “corruption on earth.”
Many of these executed have been minors on the time the acts have been dedicated.
In some circumstances, victims have been publicly executed, inflicting countless struggling to their households and society at giant.
These information are secretly delivered to us each morning. In some circumstances, the stays of a cherished one could be recovered on the discretion of the household. The return of our bodies is used as a morbid bargaining chip in alternate for the silence of the households.
At least 1,300 folks have been executed in Iran since January 1, 2025. Only 8% of those executions have been reported by the regime. For the remaining, Iranian human rights teams report that the official variety of executions has doubled since 2024 and is the very best in 36 years. This leaves Iran within the troublesome place of holding the world report for probably the most executions per capita.
Every day, so many households grieve and commemorate the anniversary of the disappearances of victims of the regime. Lives are misplaced to bullets and torture as civilians are compelled to admit to crimes they didn’t commit, set hearth to trash cans, and are accused of burning posters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Some folks commit suicide by getting an injection after they go away jail. Even docs and nurses have been recognized to vanish after treating injured protesters. The our bodies of some victims have been found a lot later and confirmed indicators of beatings and accidents.
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Violence will not be restricted to executions and enforced disappearances. It additionally seems within the quiet dying that outcomes from human despair. How many youngsters commit suicide as a result of they lack college provides or can’t go to highschool? How many docs, younger medical trainees, college college students, professors, journalists, and staff have taken their very own lives, both underneath stress or as victims of fanatical and corrupt members of the regime? How many struggling women refusing compelled marriages, girls enduring home violence, or desperately poor staff have tried self-immolation?
But Iranian resilience reveals up in sudden locations.
Every Tuesday beginning in February 2024, inmates are on starvation strike in 52 prisons throughout Iran in opposition to the dying penalty, whatever the expenses they face or their private or political opinions.
Last month, the strike inside Ghazelhesar Prison went past the “Tuesdays Against Executions” marketing campaign. For seven days, 1,500 prisoners on dying row staged an intensive strike contained in the jail. Some had their lips sewn shut. On October nineteenth, they acquired:
Suspends drug-related executions for six months Returns six prisoners from execution segregation Promises reconsideration for commutation of sentences
This victory was because of the braveness of the strikers, the growth of the motion to different prisons, and an enormous worldwide marketing campaign. Despite finishing up 17 executions within the first two days and setting off cell phone jammers, their resolve by no means wavered.
Despite the continued crackdown, the mobilization of households in entrance of parliament on October 19 reveals that Iranian society rejects this lethal coverage. Still, stopping this machine of dying would require huge mobilization.
Without written commitments or worldwide oversight, the government-granted six-month moratorium on executions might merely be a tactic to quell mobilization and quietly resume executions later. The historical past of this administration is one in every of guarantees that weren’t saved. Therefore, this requires vigilance.
Political prisoners should be launched. The 1,500 dying row inmates at Ghazelhesar and all dying row inmates sentenced to dying in different prisons in Iran should be saved perpetually, as it’s the system itself that’s accountable for the acts that despatched them to jail. Poverty, lack of alternative and training, and social injustice drive determined folks to make tragic selections, typically resulting from networks managed by the Revolutionary Guards.
The late Justice Minister Robert Baditel, who abolished the dying penalty in France, stated, “The dying penalty doesn’t defend society, however damages the consideration of society.” Prisoners have the precise to rehabilitation, not the dying penalty. And the Iranian folks have a proper to freedom, not oppression.
All lives matter.
Let’s assist the Iranian folks of their quest for freedom, each behind bars and on the streets.