05 January 2025 :
December 31, 2024 - IRAN. 34 Women Executed in 2024
Out of the 997 individuals executed in Iran in 2024, 34 were women. At first glance, the presence of 34 women among nearly a thousand executions may not seem particularly high. However, it is important to consider that in no other country are even a tenth of this number of women executed.
According to data compiled by the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, at least 263 women have been executed in Iran since 2007.
From 2013 to 2020, a period of eight years, at least 120 women were executed in the country, with an annual average of 15 executions. However, in 2024, with 34 women executed, the number has more than doubled this average, marking a deeply alarming increase.
Since Ebrahim Raisi took office in 2021, the number of executions, including those of women, has steadily increased. After Raisi’s death on May 19, 2023, and the rise of Masoud Pezeshkian in August 2023, this upward trend accelerated further.
During Pezeshkian’s tenure, an average of 4.6 women were executed monthly. On October 8, 2024, Pezeshkian openly defended executions.
According to documents disclosed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, over 5,000 prisoners in Iran are currently on death row. While these sentences are issued under various pretexts, their primary motive is to preserve the clerical regime, categorizing them as political executions.
The regime’s judiciary sentenced nine political prisoners to death on charges of “membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.”
The “No to Executions” Campaign
Since February 2024, political prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison in Karaj have launched a campaign called “No to Executions Tuesdays” to protest the rising number of executions in Iran.
On Tuesday, January 30, 2024, a group of prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison announced the campaign: “To make our voices heard, we will go on a hunger strike every Tuesday. We chose Tuesday because it is often the last day of life for our fellow inmates who are transferred to solitary confinement in the preceding days.”
Through the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign, these prisoners have sought to draw greater domestic and international attention to the gross violation of the right to life and the widespread executions in Iran.
They have been on a hunger strike for 48 weeks, with 28 prisons joining the movement. Women’s wards in Evin Prison and Lakan Prison in Rasht have played a prominent role in this campaign. Courageous women and men prisoners chant in solidarity: “United, determined until the death penalty is abolished. We will stand till the end.”
Global Support for the “No to Executions Tuesdays” Campaign
On December 10, International Human Rights Day, it was announced that over 3,000 former world leaders, heads of state, ministers, ambassadors, members of parliament from various countries, UN officials, human rights experts, Nobel laureates, and NGOs had signed a statement calling for an end to executions in Iran. This announcement coincided with the 46th week of the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign.
Additionally, 581 mayors in France expressed deep concern about the alarming increase in executions during the tenure of Masoud Pezeshkian, a rate significantly higher than in previous years, and called for an immediate halt to executions in Iran.
For 46 years, the Iranian regime has sustained its existence through the systematic destruction of human rights, employing executions and massacres as tools of repression.
The international community must isolate the clerical regime and hold its leaders accountable for 46 years of crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. The Iranian Resistance demands that diplomatic and trade relations with the regime be conditioned upon the cessation of executions and torture, as well as the end of impunity for regime leaders.
The regime must allow an international investigative delegation to visit Iranian prisons and meet with prisoners, particularly political prisoners.
https://wncri.org/2024/12/31/december-2024-womens-execution-in-iran/
