On Tuesday, August 12, 2025, the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign entered its 81st consecutive week with prisoners across Iran undertaking a coordinated hunger strike. The campaign, a weekly act of defiance that began in January 2024, has grown into a powerful symbol of resistance against the regime’s systematic use of capital punishment.
This act of defiance comes amid a horrifying surge in state-sanctioned killings, with reports indicating that the regime has hanged over 110 individuals in the past 20 days. On a single day, August 6, twenty people were put to death. The campaign’s latest statement highlights the grim reality, noting, “execution and repression in Iran have peaked.”
The regime’s latest wave of repression
The regime has intensified its crackdown on political prisoners, employing tactics designed to sow fear and silence dissent. The campaign statement reported the “sudden abduction” of five political prisoners under the sentence of death: Vahid Bani-Amerian, Pouya Ghobadi, Babak Alipour, Akbar Daneshvarkar, and Mohammad Taghavi. They were forcibly transferred from Greater Tehran Prison to the notorious Ghezel Hesar prison, a move strongly condemned by Amnesty International as a potential prelude to their execution.
In a similar act of brutality, two other prisoners, Babak Shahbazi and Omid Tabari Moghadam, were beaten and transferred to Ghezel Hesar. The statement describes these actions as “part of the process of intensifying pressure on political prisoners and the unprecedented increase in the implementation of death sentences.” The danger remains acute for others, such as Baluchi political prisoner Amer Paraki Balouchzehi, who was recently moved to solitary confinement in Zahedan prison to await his execution.
The uprising within prison walls
In the face of this terror, the prisoners’ resolve has only hardened. On August 12, inmates in 49 prisons across the country, from the infamous Evin and Ghezel Hesar prisons in the capital to facilities in Karaj, Mashhad, Ahvaz, Rasht, Zahedan, and Sanandaj, participated in the weekly hunger strike. This nationwide, coordinated action demonstrates a remarkable level of organization from within the regime’s dungeons despite the extreme state repression.
The campaign’s statement articulates the spirit of this defiance, declaring: “Only through uprising and resistance, courage and a collective loud voice can this cycle of death be ended.”
The resistance spills onto the streets
The prisoners’ defiance is mirrored by a growing wave of public protest. On the same day, citizens in cities including Tehran, Astara, Kermanshah, Hamedan, and Birjand took to the streets in solidarity. Protesters bravely held placards with slogans such as “Our cry is stronger than your gallows” and the politically charged chant, “Down with the execution regime, Down with it.”
August 12—Iran
Family of death-row political prisoner Vahid Bani-Amerian hold pictures of their loved ones in solidarity with the "No to Executions Tuesdays" campaign, now in its 81st week.#IranProtestspic.twitter.com/sb4w820fka— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) August 12, 2025
Crucially, many protesters carried photos of the five political prisoners recently transferred to Ghezel Hesar, creating a powerful visual link between the resistance inside and outside prison walls. Among the most courageous voices are the families of the condemned. The elderly mother of Akbar Daneshvarkar, despite her illness, joined the rallies, holding a picture of her son and a sign demanding, “Free the political prisoners.” Their presence shatters the regime’s wall of fear and intimidation. And last week, in the city of Semirom, brave shopkeepers and merchants staged a general strike, closing their businesses to protest the death sentences issued against two brothers, Fazel and Mehran Bahramian.
A clear message and a call to the world
The synchronized actions inside prisons and on the streets send an undeniable message: the Iranian people refuse to be silenced by the gallows. The regime’s attempt to use mass execution as a tool of political control is being met with organized, nationwide defiance.
The campaign’s statement concludes with a direct appeal, transforming a national struggle into a global call for solidarity: “The ‘No to Executions Tuesdays’ campaign calls on the people of Iran and the world to stand with these families and rise up against the machine of execution in Iran with every means and tool at their disposal.”