Translations from Farsi to English are by IEC volunteers

In the context of an escalating, horrific wave of executions since the election of the “moderate” president (Masoud Pezeshkian), Iran’s theocratic regime hanged nine prisoners over this past weekend (July 20-21), eight in just 48 hours¹. On the morning of July 25, the innocent Kurdish prisoner of conscience Kamran Sheikheh² was executed in Iran after 14 years in prison. He was arrested along with six other defendants (all recently executed) at the end of 2009 and sentenced to death in 2016 on such baseless charges that the Supreme Court originally overturned the convictions.

The prisoners-led “No to Executions Tuesday” hunger strike against capital punishment has continued for half a year, expanding from one to now 16 prisons across Iran as of July 23.  They are issuing calls for all prisoners (political and non-political) to unite and elevate the anti-execution demand to a society wide political battle. The prisoners’ ongoing weekly hunger strike — in the face of death and torture — is a clarion call for solidarity to end repression and state murder in Iran and all over the world.

Salute to the Defiant Sisters in Evin’s Dungeon

On July 24, as many as 60³ courageous women political prisoners held an overnight sit-in at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison’s yard. Their specific focus was to protest the recent death sentence issued to Kurdish journalist and activist Pakhshan Azizi on sham charges of “armed rebellion”. Pakhshan is currently being held in Evin prison where she is deprived of phone calls and visitation rights. She reported multiple instances of torture during her initial five-month solitary confinement in a detention center: “I was hanged several times by interrogators.”  

According to a joint Instagram post by Evin prisoners Narges Mohammadi (2023 Nobel Laureate), Iranian-German Nahid Taghavi and Iranian writer Golrokh Iraee, the women pledged to “spend the night in the prison yard”.

Observers reported that the protesters chanted in unison:

   * Down with the execution government

   * From Kurdistan to Gilan, oppression against women

   * Women’s ward of Evin, united and determined, standing until the death sentence is abolished

   * Resistance is life, Pakhshan is a free woman

This is the second death sentence issued for a woman political prisoner in the past few weeks. On July 4, Sharifeh Mohammadi, another, activist of the Gilan minority, was sentenced to death, also on sham charges of “armed rebellion”. There have been widespread protests against her outrageous sentence including “collective actions and statements to stand with Sharifeh".⁴ In both cases, the women are charged only on the basis of alleged affiliation with parties in Iranian Kurdistan, an oppressed region.

Prisoners in Ghezel Hesar Support Evin Women: “Resistance Will Not Stop”

Responding to the protest by women prisoners of Evin Prison, the political prisoners in Ghezel Hezar, where the hunger strikes first began, wrote (reposted by Burn The Cage):

Immediately after the sham elections and their widespread boycott, the machinery of repression and execution has predictably been set in motion again. In just four days, more than 18 prisoners were executed in various prisons; this Tuesday alone, seven prisoners were executed, including three female prisoners, highlighting the misogynistic nature of the regime. Through the cries of protest of the courageous women in Evin prison, we learned that political prisoner Pakhshan Azizi was sentenced to death on the regime-fabricated charge of 'rebellion.' At the same time Mr. Kamran Sheikheh, our former companion, has also been executed this morning in Urmia Prison. We also learned that more than ten other people were transferred to solitary confinement to execute their [death] sentences. We, the prisoners of Gezel Hesar Prison, also join the protests of political prisoners in the women's wing of Evin Prison and condemn the violation of the Iranian people's right to life by the execution machinery. We call on all international human rights organizations to pay attention to the new wave of executions and stress that resistance and protest against oppression and execution, be it "normal or abnormal", "political or apolitical", will not stop.

Political Prisoners Unit 4 of Ghezel Hesar Prison

Recently, the women’s organization Osyan⁵ posted:

Why has the Islamic Republic attacked women activists? The Islamic Republic is furious over the blow suffered by Gina's uprising. An uprising focused on the issues of women and national oppression throughout Iran that unleased the anger of people over these two long-standing atrocities and shook the government as a whole… The government with prison and death sentences of these women seeks several goals:

First, the danger of impending uprisings and stronger blows to the foundations of their state power;

Second, it always takes hostages to inject fear into society by threatening their lives and safety;

And third, to deprive society of its real organizers and intellectual representatives in the war against the powers-that-be, and thereby strengthen its pawns as representatives of the people.

The message of the Islamic Republic is clear: Full hostility toward women fighters! Our message to the government is also clear: we will respond to your attack with a strong counter-attack. Uprising against execution should become the center of the fight for all social movements from the Women’s and Queer Movements to the Workers, Teachers, Retirees and Artists Movements. No both to execution and to the republic of executions!

The brave and determined protests of Iran’s prisoners against the death sentences of Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammadi, and NO to executions of prisoners must be supported as precious, inspiring role model of resistance for all who hate injustice and oppression from Iran to Gaza to the U.S. As Dr. Cornel West said about the (rescinded for now) death sentence of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi “we need moral consistency.” And we say to our sisters and brothers in Iran’s hellholes: “keep your head up”. We stand with you and we will not forget you in our common struggle for justice and a better world:

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!

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FOOTNOTES

¹ 266 prisoners were executed in Iran in the first half of 2024. Over 850 were executed in 2023, 74% of all recorded executions in the world. “Iran executes 853 people in eight-year high amid relentless repression and renewed ‘war on drugs”, Amnesty International, April 4, 2024

² “Iran executes Kurdish prisoner of conscience after 14 years in jail”, kurdistanhumanrights.org, July 25, 2024.

³ Reza Akvanian, human rights journalist, and Iran International English reported on July 24 that about 60 women were participating.

⁴ “Iran’s Political Prisoners Exemplify Resilience in Resisting Theocratic Regime”, freeiranspoliticalprisonersnow.org, July 15, 2024.

⁵ Osyan/Revolt is a group of Iranian and Afghan women who are the voice of women’s rebellion to express the determination, and to serve the struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Taliban.

On July 19, rapper Toomaj Salehi should have been released on bail from prison in Isfahan, Iran, after Iran’s Supreme Court, responding to a massive campaign inside and outside Iran, had overturned his death sentence in late June and returned the case to a lower court. But now, his official social media (run by administrators on his behalf) announced that the Isfahan judiciary had fabricated four new charges to prevent his release.

The new case against Toomaj Salehi includes four charges, described in such medieval and theocratic language that a real-world translation is needed:

1. “Insulting the sanctities” [disrespecting the mullah regime]

2. “Inciting violence and murder” [supporting “Woman, Life, Freedom” and other protests]

3. “Propaganda against the regime” [lyrics and social media posts critical of the regime]

4. “Spreading lies to disturb public opinion” [see 2 and 3]

Far from being “crimes”, these describe artistic expressions of opposition to oppression, which have won Toomaj millions of fervent followers, especially among disaffected Iranian youth.

The Isfahan court, in a truly “creative” leap, based these new charges on the release of a music video  (Typhus, a diss track subtitled in Farsi only) by friends of Toomaj with rearranged images and lyrics all published prior to Toomaj’s arrest in October 2022. This smacks of punishing Toomaj for the solidarity actions of his supporters, actions which, he has said, have saved his life several times.

The X post notes the absurdity of charging Toomaj for acts that supposedly took place while he “was in prison for more than 20 months, with strict limitations imposed on his phone calls and visits so he has essentially had no opportunity to make decisions, express opinions, or even directly participate in the alleged crime.”

“This is the first time in judicial history that a country's judicial system, after twice failing to attribute baseless charges to an artist, now searches through the lyrics of his rap songs to find examples to use as a pretext to keep him in prison.”

A video on @toomajofficial Instagram posted on July 19 had over 75,000 views/likes in one day. It shows that he has been in prison a total of 618 days on one bogus charge after another, many of those days in solitary confinement under severe torture and/or without any contact with family or lawyers. Currently, his phone calls have been completely cut off since July 8. He is denied needed medical treatment and physical therapy for the results of torture which broke bones in his legs and hands.  

As Toomaj has said, “I should not be in prison for even one day”. Many in Iran call him “the son of Iran” but in reality he is the son of all the people of the world who chafe under the chains of oppression and hunger for art that represents the fierce struggle for a better world. This brave and beloved artist must be freed immediately and unconditionally.

Rely on mobilizing the people of the world, not governments

Several bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress, including a “Toomaj Act” (2024) on June 1, and a “Mahsa Act” (2023), even a “Support for Iranian Political Prisoners Act” (2022). Some high-ranking U.S. officials and figures (e.g., National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Jill Biden) openly mouthed support for the struggle of the people in Iran, such as during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising (2022-2023). The U.S. and its crime partners (Europe, Israel, etc.) are current chief rivals of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and exploit Iran’s troubles and vice versa. This is why we keep repeating the profound truth in the IEC emergency appeal that

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.

In sum, the U.S. imperialists and the IRI theocrats are both bloodthirsty gangsters but the U.S. is the bigger threat to humanity. If you support one or the other of these regimes (and their flunkies and proxies), you are strengthening gangsterism. You strengthen their ability to point to each other as excuses for their crimes. This is wrong and harmful as to the real interests of Toomaj and all of Iran’s heroic political prisoners. It also harms the interests of all those suffering under U.S. imperialism domestically and internationally by promoting illusions.

Instead join with the IEC to actively promote and fight for a grassroots movement based on these demands, endorsed by more than 5,000:

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!