Reported by PMOI/MEK
Iran, Oct. 17, 2018 – In a conference on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty, held in the municipality of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, a call for the abolishment of executions in Iran was read.
The signatories included 2,320 prisoners on death row from nine cities of Iran, political prisoners as well as the families and relatives of the inmates.
Behzad Naziri, a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who read out the statement at the conference, told the audience, “I want to draw your attention to news that has been coming out of the prisoner of Iran. Since September 23, The Iranian resistance has been engaged in a widespread campaign regarding executions in Iran.
“On the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty, 2,320 death row prisoners from nine prisons in Iran called for the abolishment of the death penalty in an open statement. According to the officials of the Iranian regime, there are currently more than 5,000 people who are awaiting execution. You can only imagine at the nightmare they’re living.”
The statement has the signature of 2,320 prisoners from the following nine prisons:
- Gohardasht Prison (Karaj)
- Urumiyeh Prison
- Diesel Abad Prison (Kermanshah)
- Dastgerd Prison (Isfahan)
- Mahabad Prison
- Ardebil Prison
- Yazd Prison
- Markazi Prison (Karaj)
- Tehran-e Bozorg Prison
Parts of the statement by the prisoners read as such:
As we approach the World Day Against the Death Penalty, in Iran, 170 people have been executed in the first six months of the Persian year (March-October). We, the signatories, are thousands of Iranian prisoners who are awaiting our deaths behind the bars of Iran’s horrendous prisons.
This is how Zaniar Moradi, who was recently executed, described the feelings of a death-row prisoner:
“Nine years have passed, during which I spent day and night contemplating on the inhumane death sentence. During this period, I always felt the presence of wooden beams and a few meters of rope at my side. Many nights, I imagined my own hanging. It’s been nine years that, day and night, I think about the gallows where I will be hanged, the rope that will be tightened around my neck. I only exhausted myself thinking about this. Every time I heard about the execution of our youth, I thought that my turn has come too…”
These are the feelings of a prisoner that is awaiting execution.
After 40 years of public executions and torture, enough is enough. The gallows are not the answer to the needs and problems of our people.
As prisoners whose every day is tied with execution and death, we call on the families of death-row prisoners and all political and human rights activists to join their voices against the death sentence. We ask the international community and human rights institutions to unite for the abolishment of executions in Iran.
