Iran’s “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign entered its 91st consecutive week after a remarkable act of defiance from within one of Iran’s most notorious prisons by death-row inmates forced a significant retreat from regime authorities, marking a victory for the nationwide movement.
Prisoners in Unit 2 of Ghezel Hesar prison held a week-long hunger strike to protest the regime’s wave of mass executions. Their courageous stand succeeded in saving the lives of six fellow inmates who had been transferred to solitary confinement for their imminent executions. The campaign’s weekly statement highlighted the immense risk taken by the prisoners, who knowingly put their own lives on the line. “This widespread strike was, for each of them, in fact, welcoming death,” the weekly statement of the “No to Executions Tuesday” campaign noted, adding that “the medieval regime could have expedited their executions for their resistance.”
A brutal campaign of executions
This act of prison resistance comes amid a horrifying surge in the regime’s use of capital punishment as a tool of political suppression. According to the campaign’s latest report, the regime executed a staggering 59 people in the last week alone, a figure that includes two women and a child offender.
The monthly toll for the Persian month of Mehr (September 23–October 22) has reached 232, bringing the total number of executions in the year 1404 (starting on March 21, 2025) to over 1,087. This state-sanctioned killing spree also includes politically motivated sentences. The statement noted that last week, the regime hanged a prisoner in Qom prison on the fabricated charge of “communicating with hostile governments,” demonstrating its use of the gallows to silence any form of dissent.
Security Forces Attack ‘No to Execution’ Rally as Protests by Retirees and Bakers Sweep #Iranian Citieshttps://t.co/YrvoXsK3ZI
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 19, 2025
Resistance spreads across the nation
The defiance in Ghezel Hesar is not an isolated event but the focal point of a disciplined and widespread national movement. On Sunday, October 19, families of the condemned prisoners amplified their voices by protesting outside the regime’s parliament in Tehran, demanding an end to the state’s repressive policies.
On Tuesday, October 21, the campaign’s 91st week was marked by coordinated hunger strikes in an unprecedented 52 prisons across Iran. Inmates in facilities from Evin Prison in Tehran and Adelabad Prison in Shiraz to prisons in Zahedan, Sanandaj, and Ahvaz joined the collective action. This growing solidarity inside the regime’s dungeons shows that its attempts to instill fear through executions are failing. As the campaign’s statement declared, “The death-row prisoners of Ghezel Hesar and their families have shown that they have nothing left to lose and have resolved to topple the gallows and the tyrannical establishment altogether.”
An urgent plea for international action
In its 91st weekly statement, the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign directly addressed the international community, framing its inaction as a moral failure. The campaign called for concrete and practical measures to halt the slaughter of prisoners, urging world governments to sever diplomatic relations with the clerical regime and to form an international investigative file on the officials responsible for torture and mass murder in Iran.
No to Execution Tuesdays in #Iran: A Movement That Won’t Be Silencedhttps://t.co/X34zjFdGVh
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 23, 2025
The statement concluded with a stark warning to the world, emphasizing that silence in the face of such atrocities is a form of approval. “Inaction in the face of the crimes of this naked tyranny is, in practice, tantamount to complicity in their crimes.”