Organized resistance to executions began in January 2024 among Iran’s prisoners and spread in the ensuing weeks. A statement came from a group of prisoners taking part in the “Black Tuesday No to Execution” hunger strikes from behind the walls of Ghezel Hesar, Evin, Karaj, Mashhad and Khorramabad prisons:

We have been on a hunger strike every Tuesday for the past seven weeks to protest the execution of death sentences and to stop this killing machine….Our aim with this weekly “Black Tuesday” [hunger] strike has been to draw the attention to the role of executions as a key tool in the [IRI] government’s tyrannical rule by repression and intimidation…We are sure that the day is not far off when … no citizen will be held captive and oppressed for their opinions or ideas. But until that day, we will continue what we know to be our moral duty – to protest from inside the prisons…It will take unity and collective action to Stop the Execution Machine…We extend our hands to all people of conscience in Iran and the world and ask for their support.

From @burnthecage post on March 19 (excerpted and translated by IEC)

On March 26, the first Tuesday of the Persian New Year, prisoners in Khoy and Naghadeh in northwest Iran also joined the escalating “Black Tuesday” weekly hunger strikes that were initiated in late January 2024 by death row prisoners in Iran’s largest prison, Ghezel (Qezel) Hesar. They selected Tuesday as a day to strike because the authorities often carry out their gruesome preparations for hangings at dawn on Wednesdays. Whether these hunger strikers were imprisoned as political prisoners or not, all of them have joined its ranks by taking this courageous action under horrific conditions.

Immediately after the announcement of the first hunger strike, the entire women’s ward of Evin Prison in Tehran (61 women) announced their participation. Since January, more prisons in Iran’s far-flung regions have joined the weekly strikes. Think about the difficult conditions in which these prisoners are organizing and giving political leadership to others inside and outside prison to stand together to fight the repressive regime. They are issuing larger social demands on the direction of society and not simply for improving each of their own dire conditions, as justified as that would be. They are taking great risks in organizing collective forms of resistance to demand an end to a key element of the theocratic fascist regime while inside its draconian clutches. The regime holds the power of life and death over all of them, with women prisoners facing a variety of added abuses in Iran’s misogynistic system based on Sharia/religious rule. The spirit of collective, organized, disciplined resistance is notable as the weekly strikes are reported to be continuing.

As former political prisoner Somayeh Kargar put it in her Instagram post in January, “Execution is a crime that must be stopped, no execution of anyone, anywhere, for any reason! The fight to end executions and the intertwined fight to immediately and unconditionally free all political prisoners is an important part of our fight against the Islamic Republic.” She makes clear her own perspective as stated in her Instagram post “…the struggle [that] has arisen inside women’s prison…should be transformed into our public resolve to overthrow the system” in Iran. She had written an important letter to 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner and political prisoner Narges Mohammadi which the IEC translated and published.

Political Prisoners Challenge People in Iran and the World to Stand with Gaza

The shared humanity of Iran’s political prisoners comes through in the political fight to stop state executions. It is even more strikingly expressed in a joint letter issued by nine of Evin’s political prisoners in November 2023. In it, they called for people in Iran to stand against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. This letter goes against the popular tide in Iran of Persian nationalism and ideologically challenges the narrow-minded poison in the thinking of many of the masses. Even as Iran’s reactionary regime works to capitalize on being “anti-Western imperialism” by its support of forces like Hamas, they brutally oppress ethnic minorities inside Iran including Arabs, Kurds, Baluchi and others.

Seven men and two women managed to organize across the wards of notorious Evin Prison to issue this appeal: “Our Responsibility Concerning the Suffering of Others.” As the genocide in Gaza has become more horrific by the hour going into seven months, it is more than ever that this significant letter be shared and debated. This is a global dividing line and still a hotly contended question among the masses inside and outside Iran (and worldwide) with severe repression of pro-Palestinian voices and protests in the U.S. and other NATO countries (e.g., Germany).

See the full letter. Here are some key excerpts:

We simply cannot cover over this complex and unequal war being waged against the Palestinian people, with the justification of our resentment against the government [of Iran] and its destructive policies and wars [in the region]. ….The dichotomy presented to us —Hamas or Israel, military intervention or the current situation going on and on— offer only a choice between bad and worse. As long as we look only at options the rulers give us, rather than creating our own way forward, the result can only be bad or worse...as if war-mongering and slaughtering are only bad when the bombs fall on me [with thinking of]: “I don't care what happens to Gaza!” “I don't care what is happening to Baluchistan and Kurdistan!” “Whatever happens to the immigrants from Afghanistan, to women, to workers and the semi-unemployed, to the people who live in the slums and shanty towns!... I only protest when I and people in my own circle get attacked.”

Governments are indifferent to the suffering of the people, and wars can divert and become an obstacle to popular and revolutionary movements. Therefore, our approach is to actively bring forward an antiwar wing in the heart of the “Woman, Life, Freedom" revolutionary movement — while simultaneously condemning Israel's genocide and dehumanization of the Palestinian people, condemning the reactionary nature of Hamas and how it treats these very same people [as tools to achieve its goals], condemning the regional governments that support [Hamas], and condemning the imperialist sponsors that benefit from this brutal war.

Iran’s political prisoners have continuously issued collective protest statements over several years. What they are modeling, from diverse political viewpoints, is that the collective struggle for a better future does not stop at the prison gates. There is the urgent need to fight Iran’s oppressive and repressive regime, but also to struggle to transform the thinking of the people to take responsibility for people all over the world to break free. This is more so in light of recent developments with U.S. war threats against Iran.

In all this, we continue to reiterate the political stand of the IEC as it is ever more relevant and needs to be urgently taken up by all justice loving people worldwide:

The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran. We demand of the Islamic Republic of Iran: FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! We say to the U.S government: NO THREATS OR WAR MOVES AGAINST IRAN, LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!

^[1] Iran executes 853 people in eight-year high amid relentless repression and renewed ‘war on drugs’, Amnesty.org, April 4, 2024.

^[2] On the Importance of Truth to Achieving Emancipation: A Letter to Narges Mohammadi from Somayeh Kargar, FreeIransPoliticalPrisonersNow.org, January 2024