The Iranian regime is quietly moving to eliminate its adversaries under the shadow of war and a protracted internet blackout. Unable to break the resistance of dissidents and reeling from the massive nationwide uprisings of December 2025 to January 2026, the desperately weakened state is waging a cruel, two-front war against dissidents.
Inside prisons, authorities have intensified a systematic crackdown on female political prisoners. And outside prisons, the state is taking the grieving families of executed political prisoners hostage, inflicting collective punishment to prevent its inevitable overthrow.
Silencing the unbreakable: The crackdown on female prisoners
At the center of this repression are female political prisoners, particularly supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). In Evin Prison, authorities recently fabricated a new case against PMOI supporters Shiva Esmaeili and Elaheh Fouladi, sentencing them to an additional six months behind bars for “insulting the Supreme Leader.” Their actual “crime” was protesting the death of 42-year-old Somayeh Rashidi, who was martyred under torture in Varamin’s Qarchak center on September 25, 2025.
To break the inmates’ morale, regime torturers are also weaponizing family visitations. Seven female political prisoners—Zahra Safaei, Forough Taghipour, Marzieh Farsi, Elaheh Fouladi, Arghavan Fallahi, Shiva Esmaeili, and Golrokh Iraee—were deprived of family visits simply for singing anthems and chanting “No to execution” in solidarity with the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign.
Meanwhile, in Yazd Prison, guards are using the pretext of wartime conditions to deny vital medication and hospital transfers to 40-year-old PMOI supporter Parisa Kamali. Kamali, who is slated to be exiled to Khash Prison, faces life-threatening conditions but remains unbroken. In a message marking the 40th-day memorial of the January uprising martyrs, she wrote: “We will never let this flag fall to the ground, and we believe this bloody path will end in victory.”
Expanding the terror: Taking families hostage
The regime’s cruelty does not stop at the prison walls. In tandem with its execution spree, the state criminalizes grief, targeting the relatives of PMOI martyrs to prevent mourning ceremonies from sparking new uprisings.
On April 18, 2026, authorities arrested Akram and Azam Daneshvarkar, sisters of PMOI martyr Akbar Daneshvarkar, who was severely tortured in Evin Prison’s Ward 209 before his execution on March 30. The sisters were sent to Qarchak Prison on fabricated national security charges simply for spending 20 days trying to retrieve their brother’s body. Akram, 54, was specifically targeted for her activism in the “No to Execution Tuesdays” campaign.
The regime also uses preemptive hostage-taking. Prior to the March 31, 2026 execution of PMOI martyr Babak Alipour, authorities arrested his 63-year-old mother, Omolbanin Dehghan—another active participant in the anti-execution campaign—alongside his 31-year-old sister Maryam and 40-year-old brother Roozbeh. The family was denied a final farewell, and executioners refused to hand over Babak’s body.
Sparing no one, suppressive forces also abducted 63-year-old Masoumeh Azhini on April 4, 2026. Azhini had previously been jailed for seeking justice for her brother Mahmoud, a victim of the 1988 massacre. A few days earlier, on March 29, forces abducted Vali Zoghi-Tabar, the ailing father of an imprisoned PMOI supporter, just after he required medical care for two surgeries.
A vulnerable regime and the need for global action
The clerical regime’s escalating crimes against humanity reflect its terminal instability and profound fear of PMOI Resistance Units. The Iranian Resistance urges the international community to move past mere verbal condemnations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran must take immediate, punitive actions to hold the regime accountable.
This requires the unconditional release of all imprisoned political prisoners and an urgent visit by an international fact-finding mission to Iranian prisons to meet directly with the brave female prisoners bearing the brunt of this brutal, yet failing, dictatorship.