As part of the ongoing “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign, prisoners in 62 prisons across Iran went on hunger strike on Tuesday, September 8. The prisoners, protesting the sweeping wave of executions, said they would continue their protest until all executions are brought to an end and stopped.
Full Text of the Statement by the “No to Executions Tuesdays” Campaign
Continuation of the “No to Executions Tuesdays” Campaign; 137th Week in 62 Prisons Across Iran
Over the past week, the regime’s machinery of repression and execution continued killing prisoners at an unrelenting pace, hanging at least 11 people. Statistics show that more than 45 prisoners have been executed since the beginning of Shahrivar (Persian month beginning on August 22).
In another development, after the regime’s Supreme Court agreed to a retrial in the case of Alireza Sepahi, an Isfahan prisoner sentenced to death, his case was referred to a parallel branch of the court. However, the branch rejected the retrial without holding a hearing and sent the case to the enforcement branch for implementation of the death sentence.
According to additional information, Taraneh Rahimi, Navid Elyasi, Abolfazl Dadgostar, Mehdi Mansouri, Ahmadreza Saeedi, Mehrdad Boeiri, Mohammadmehdi Asadi, Armin Gholami, Parsa Jafari, and Mehdi Jafari (Khosravi) have each been sentenced to death and 11 years in prison. Romina Rahimi and Milad Boeiri have each been sentenced to 36 years in prison; Hamed Mehralian to 26 years in prison; and Setayesh Saedi, Sajjad Abedi, and Ali Boeiri have each been sentenced to 16 years in prison. Accordingly, the combined prison sentences issued for the 16 defendants in this case total 256 years. These sentences were issued at the trial court stage. We referred to this group case last week, and the lives of these prisoners are at risk.
The intensification of these individual and mass acts of repression and executions reflects the regime’s fear of nationwide protests and uprisings to come. The worsening economic crisis, triple-digit inflation, the surge in the dollar exchange rate to 2.3 million rials, the official start of gasoline price increases on Tuesday, and the increasingly shrinking purchasing power of workers and laborers are painting a picture of the prospect of a social explosion more clearly than ever.
In these critical circumstances, the need to continue the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign has become even more urgent despite all the dangers and restrictions inside prisons. We, the members of this campaign, once again call on all international institutions, awakened consciences, human rights defenders, and advocates of abolishing the death penalty around the world to join us and stand in solidarity.
Members of the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign went on hunger strike in 62 prisons across Iran on Tuesday, September 8, during the 137th consecutive week of this protest movement.
