In July 2024, a court in Gilan province in northern Iran sentenced to death Sharifeh Mohammadi, a political activist and a member of the Gilak minority in Iran, on the spurious charge of “Baghi”—armed rebellion against the Islamic Republic. This represented “normalizing the process of executing women political prisoners.” (For more on the women in danger of execution and resistance by women political prisoners, see “Persistent Brave Resistance by Women Prisoners in Iran, Calls for Broader Actions and International Solidarity”.)

She had been tortured for months in solitary confinement without any contact with the outside world. Even under these conditions, the court was not able to “prove” any association with armed groups other than her having helped found a non-political labor organizing collective 10 years ago. Her family and supporters worked tirelessly to build support among dozens of labor unions and a wide range of activists inside Iran and worldwide.

The Free Sharifeh campaign announced:

We are pleased to announce that the death sentence against Sharifeh Mohammadi has been overturned by [Iran's] Supreme Court... We emphasize that the overturning of Sharifeh’s death sentence is the result of the support and solidarity of all those who have stood by us and Sharifeh’s family throughout this period. We, the members of the Campaign for the Defense of Sharifeh Mohammadi, extend our heartfelt thanks to Sharifeh’s lawyers, labor unions, teachers’ organizations, student groups, retirees in Iran and around the world, human rights organizations, media outlets, activists from various fields, and all individuals and institutions who have consistently supported us in this struggle.  In our view, the reversal of Sharifeh’s death sentence, along with her courage and resistance, is a result of our collective struggle and represents a victory for social movements… We cannot hide our outrage that Sharifeh is still imprisoned. We refuse to be content with the mere overturning of her death sentence. It cannot make us ignore the oppression and torture that has been inflicted on Sharifeh, her child, her mother, her husband, her entire family and us, the members of her campaign. We will not be joyful, until the moment Sharifeh is acquitted of all allegations against her, and she is unconditionally released….

Campaign to Defend Sharifeh Mohammadi

12 October 2024

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IEC Organizers’ Message to the Grassroots: Ten Things You Can Do to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners

In response to our last update eblast to our list of Emergency Appeal (EA) signatories, we received two emails. One was short but heartwarming “I support you” and another asked, “When you call on the grassroots to take action, please tell us what you want us to do.” Over the nearly four years of our existence, IEC email blasts are consistently sent to over a thousand people, with anywhere between 400-600+ opening, and various rates of forwarding. Given this, we would like to answer the inquiry addressed to our entire IEC community to take urgent action online and on the ground.

1. Promote this campaign and its stellar website that shows just a few of the most prominent signatories out of over 5000 in 50 countries. Continue to ask people to sign the EA (now in 8 languages on our website). Even though some of the particulars are dated, its core message still holds as to dividing lines to free the political prisoners.
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2. Continue to circulate the timely 8/25 webinar jointly hosted by the IEC and the Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco (UUSF) from our website. The event was inspired by the political prisoners in Iran, especially the women in Iran’s Evin prison, and spotlighted their urgent struggle against the rise of executions taking place in Iran. From different perspectives, there was a spirit of unity in genuine care and support for Iran’s political prisoners, opposing the Islamic Republic’s theocracy, as well as opposing US imperialism's threats against Iran.
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3. Donate and sustain the IEC via our donate page and ask your colleagues, family and friends. We have received donations of $5 to $500, and it all goes to print flyers, palm cards, banners, posters, and hosting our website (Our small but hugely dedicated volunteer team without deep pockets is unpaid). Contact potential philanthropist individuals or groups who may donate to the IEC based on its unique viewpoint concentrated in its EA and especially its two slogans.
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4. Organize a gathering, e.g., a vigil, a literature table, a workshop, an art exhibition, or a film screening (with preventative measures against disruptions by monarchists/Zionists where relevant). Partner with progressive groups like the UUSF to screen films on Zoom (invite IEC rep for talk-backs) and to hold vigils or workshops. Contact your local left-leaning theaters to screen films by Iran’s politically persecuted but award-winning filmmakers like Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi.
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5. Reprint flyers and posters from the IEC website and take to events or protests around US/Israeli genocide in Gaza/Lebanon, and against US/Israel-Iran war escalation. Make use of and spread the materials on our website under the resources, global movement, and prisoners’ news tabs, as well as the homepage. Volunteer to help translate from Farsi to English.
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6. Take action and let us know actions you or others took to spread the campaign: Send us written reports or photos and videos with captions that tell us who, what, where (e.g., the country or city) and when (important in our fast-paced world) and supportive responses or significant controversy (e.g., over Iran being “axis of resistance” to Western imperialism, or growth of pro-US/Israel sentiments against Iran).
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7. Follow the IEC on social media and repost the IEC’s messages! Do messages of support and post them on social media to individuals or groups of Iran’s political prisoners (e.g. Evin prison’s leftist women, Narges Mohammadi, Golrakh Iraee, Toomaj Salehi) via social media of their family/supporters.  Copy to IEC as well as Amnesty International UK, Germany, San Francisco in the US, or to the Narges Foundation.
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8. Contact a local church, mosque, synagogue, and atheist social justice groups as well as Amnesty International chapters and ask if they are acting to free Iran’s brave political prisoners who are rebelling against a misogynist theocracy and if not, why not. Engage and enlist them using IEC’s website resources including the webinar and EA.
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9. Get this campaign, especially the fierce rebellion of Evin’s women prisoners, onto campuses as part of radicalizing the social atmosphere (see IEC suggested list of books and movies under resources on our website), do book reports, write poetry, and organize brown bag lunches or classroom discussions.
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10. Contact us with your ideas and suggestions — but make sure to include what it is you can do and want to do in taking responsibility to advance this crucial struggle in the interest of humanity. DO NOT waste your time contacting government representatives and/or getting bills passed in the reactionary US Congress, or worse BY sending your appeal with personal info to Islamic Republic or US authorities. It only legitimizes these reactionary regimes and fosters harmful illusions. Instead we need to rely on the power of the people — mobilize the grassroots — in order to change the world in our own interest.

World-renowned Argentine-Chilean-American novelist, playwright, and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman has written:

Even as the Islamic theocracy of Iran is being threatened by the U.S.-backed genocidal Israel, it continues to execute its own population at a harrowing rate. On October 2, Iran’s mullah regime finished firing a barrage of missiles at Israel while hanging seven prisoners in Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj, known for its waterfalls just 26 miles outside of Iran’s capital Tehran. Two days later, iranwire.com wrote, “The Islamic Republic authorities have executed at least ten more prisoners over the past two days.” The pace of executions is dizzying, even as the numbers are often underestimations due to difficulty of verification under this regime. The continual, determined resistance of Iran’s prisoners is shining a light on the possibility of another, better future.

In 2023, Amnesty International reported 853 executions in Iran. Ghezel Hesar reportedly had the highest recorded number of executions within that horrific rate. It is Iran’s largest, and severely overcrowded state prison. In early 2024, it became renowned by its prisoners boldly initiating the “Tuesdays No to Execution” hunger strike political movement.

An October 1 Instagram post by Burn the Cage/Free the Birds organization based in Europe gives the following perspective:

What has always made the issue of executions so serious is that it is fundamental to the functioning of this government. This means that whatever the charges against the accused, the ultimate goal of executions is to intensify repression. And, as we have seen, the number of executions has significant correlation with the domestic and international situation, when [the IRI] is unable to resolve problems of direction, it takes revenge, and the most readily available means is to erect more nooses. In other words, given their current necessity, they’re taking even more revenge on prisoners and death row inmates in order to conceal their impotence in international affairs, and to threaten and intimidate domestically…

The prisoner-led weekly strike is now into its 36th week, spreading to 22 different prisons across Iran as of Tuesday, October 1, 2024. One of the prisons participating in these weekly hunger strikes is Evin Prison in Tehran, especially the undaunted women’s ward where 2023 Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi is imprisoned. On September 24, as the United Nations General Assembly was welcoming and legitimizing Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian, 45 women in the dungeon of Evin went on hunger strike to demand “a halt to executions and the release of political and ideological prisoners.” Their voice was royally ignored by the so-called international community (i.e., imperialist, capitalist states) and their pliant media. Political prisoner Golrokh Iraee in a post on her Instagram signed by “a group of leftist women in Evin” indicted the UN’s overall, historical role saying:

…despite the fact that the UN Fact-Finding mission was not allowed to enter Iran to investigate the 2022 massacres—the United Nation held a memorial ceremony following the death of [President Ebrahim] Raisi, the same Raisi who had ordered the killings!...

If we the Iranian people, despite the cost of decades of fighting against dictatorship, have not yet achieved our goals, it is because of your recognition of governments like this one, the governments to whom you have given democratic cover and whose actual deeds have received your stamp of approval, while those who always pay the price are the people.

Join in Urgent Support Needed Worldwide for the Hunger Strikers

In late August, in a summer that saw a surge in executions by Iran’s misogynistic rulers and death sentences issued to two women activists (Sharifeh Mohammadi, Pakhshan Azizi), 60 human rights organizations worldwide issued a joint statement of solidarity with the prisoners’ hunger strike “No to Execution Tuesdays.” A few weeks later, nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates announced similar support for the hunger strikes in a letter that said:

We, the signatories of this statement, declare our support for the campaign against executions on Tuesday and call for an end to this inhumane punishment in Iran.

Among the nine are two Nobel laureates who had also signed the IEC’s Emergency Appeal—Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams.

While these statements and events are extremely important in putting this matter into the public square, much more is needed. Iran’s execution surge has not been widely covered by any mainstream press, in particular NOT in the U.S. It is up to the grassroots to get the word out and not let these prisoners be murdered by Iran’s mullah regime. More protests and statements are needed from around the world. To further cite the stakes of this struggle from the above Burn the Cage Instagram:

We are issuing an alarm about the situation of prisoners who are under death sentences. In the coming weeks, there is a possibility of executions and death sentences increasing, for the above mentioned reasons, and those prisoners are the first to pay the price for the regional failures and domestic weaknesses of the theocratic tyrants that rule our country.

Therefore, we ask all freedom-loving and critical thinking human beings, all human rights activists, domestic and international to be the voice of the prisoners who have been sentenced to death. Do not stand by in silence and allow them to be executed.

An alarm must be sounded about the vicious targeting of Narges Mohammadi by Iran’s regime. She was physically assaulted in the Evin women prison yard sit-in, and has endured repeated denial of critical medical care. On her social media administered by her family in Paris, there is this alert: “In the past month, prison authorities have prevented Narges Mohammadi from leaving prison to undergo angiography.” This is a direct threat to the life of this lifelong and determined prisoner of conscience, and protest of her treatment must be expressed with urgency.

Burn the Cage will be hosting a “No to Execution Tuesdays” solidarity event on October 11, 2024 in Cologne, Germany. So far, announced speakers are Hamid Narviei (activist on matters related to Baluchestan, Iran); Somayeh Kargar (Communist Party of Iran, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist); Sara Sadighi (activist and analyst on queer matters and an ex-political prisoner); Shoresh Karimi (Communist Party of Iran in Cologne, Germany); Atefeh Huseini (women rights activist and ex-political prisoner under Taliban rule in Afghanistan).

The continual, determined resistance of Iran’s prisoners is shining a light on the possibility of another, a better future other than an Islamic religious theocratic nightmare masked as “axis of resistance.” The question asks itself—“resistance” to what? The IRI is NOT a genuine resistance to capitalism-imperialism in the interest of the people, of Iran, in the region or the world. The “No to Execution Tuesdays” prisoner-led movement in Iran should be firmly supported as real resistance to an oppressive regime.

Find creative ways to raise these demands in your school, campus, church, community groups—online or on the ground: STOP EXECUTIONS IN IRAN! FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS NOW! STOP U.S./ISRAELI WAR THREATS AND MOVES AGAINST IRAN! LIFT U.S. SANCTIONS!