Declaration of the Communist Party of Iran on October 10, the World Day for the Abolition of the Death Penalty
On the eve of October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the Islamic Republic has revealed its true face more than ever as a government that rules society through the gallows. According to Amnesty International’s annual report, the Islamic regime executed at least 2,159 people in 2025. This is the highest recorded figure since 1981 and more than twice the number reported the previous year. This year, too, the execution machine has not stopped for a moment. Human rights organizations have independently verified more than 530 executions during the first eight months of 2026 alone, while reports of more than 400 additional executions are still under review. A large proportion of these executions have taken place in silence and secrecy, without notifying families and without any official announcement.
The year 2026 was the year of the January 2026 uprising and the year of war. Having become fearful of the people’s revolutionary anger, the regime saw the state of war and the digital blackout as an opportunity to take revenge on protesters. A new wave of executions of political prisoners began in March 2026 and intensified after the ceasefire. To date, at least 29 people arrested during the January 2026 uprising, along with several prisoners from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, have been hanged. Young people such as twenty years old Arvin Kheirkhah were victims of this revenge campaign in Shahrud Prison. In Kermanshah, Mohieddin Abdollahi and Hossein Palani Jaf, two Kurdish political prisoners, were executed. Hundreds of protesters are currently at risk of being sentenced to death or executed, including more than 70 people in Isfahan alone. Some of them were under 18 when they were arrested. The purpose of these executions is nothing other than to spread terror and prevent the resurgence of mass protests.
The Islamic Republic’s propaganda apparatus deceitfully presents execution as a means of reducing crime, ensuring public safety, and delivering justice. But the experience of human societies and reliable statistics show otherwise: in no society has organized state killing reduced crime rates. People are not born offenders, murderers, or criminals. Ultimately, it is the material conditions of social life that drive individuals toward criminal activity: poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and the denial of rights. Governments and ruling classes are directly responsible for imposing these oppressive conditions on the majority of the population. The large proportion of those executed on drug-related charges who come from the most deprived sections of society (including members of oppressed Kurdish, Baloch, and Arab nationalities, as well as Afghan migrants) is clear evidence of this reality. Those who create the social conditions that give rise to crime are the ones who should stand trial, not the victims of this unjust system.
Executions in the Islamic Republic have been inseparable from the regime’s rise to power and have been one of its principal instruments of survival. These crimes began with the execution of senior figures of the monarchy, but soon expanded to include fighters and opponents of the Islamic regime. In the spring of 1979, dozens of prominent figures who had been imprisoned under the Shah and released through the people’s uprising were arrested again, and many were executed. That same year, activists and leaders of the people’s protests in Turkmen Sahra were executed. In August 1979, following Khomeini’s call for jihad against the people of Kurdistan, dozens of brave sons and daughters of the Kurdish people in the provinces of Kermanshah, Kurdistan, and West Azerbaijan were sent to firing squads by the criminal Khalkhali. The execution of political activists continued unabated throughout the 1980s. In August and September 1988, thousands of political prisoners were massacred and buried in unmarked graves. Since then, the executioners of the Islamic Republic have never halted the wave of executions of political prisoners and people convicted in its ordinary courts of injustice. During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, and now following the January uprising, they once again demonstrated their irreconcilable hostility toward militant young people, sending dozens of them to the executioners’ blade from Balochistan to Kurdistan.
The Islamic Republic is one of the few governments in the world that still executes juvenile offenders, hangs people from cranes in public, and has turned state killing into an everyday occurrence. The judiciary of this regime, headed by Mohseni Ejei, which in recent years has issued the highest number of death sentences seen in three decades, continues to insist on the reactionary policies of “an eye for an eye” and “killing to make an example of others.” Execution, torture, amputation, and blinding have become institutionalized under this regime and have been given the veneer of law.
Amid this darkness, a flame of hope is rising from within the prisons. The “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign has now entered its third year and has continued for more than 140 consecutive weeks. Prisoners in nearly 60 prisons across Iran go on hunger strike every Tuesday, despite war, repression, and constant threats. This summer, prisoners sentenced to death at Ghezel Hesar Prison staged sit-ins and hunger strikes to oppose the transfer of their fellow inmates to solitary confinement for execution. The campaign aims to oppose execution as an inhumane and irreversible punishment, regardless of the type of accusation or the beliefs of those sentenced. The perseverance of these activists has resonated around the world and inspired the “No to Executions” movement in Iran and internationally.
Life is the natural right of every human being, and no one has the right to take it away from another person under any pretext. The death penalty not only deprives people of the opportunity to reform and make amends for their mistakes, but also denies society humane and effective solutions to social problems and has repeatedly led to irreversible miscarriages of justice. Today, 113 countries around the world have completely abolished the death penalty, while 145 countries “more than two-thirds of all countries” have abolished it in law or in practice. This year’s theme for the World Day, “Stories of Life,” highlights the people and families whose lives are devastated under the shadow of this punishment. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic remains at the top of this shameful list. A government that sees itself surrounded by crises and public hatred has made the gallows its last line of defense.
The struggle against the death penalty has now become a widespread social demand. This great “No” to deliberate state killing is a campaign that continues from prisons to the streets of Iran and abroad. The immediate release of political prisoners, the unconditional halt to the execution of protesters arrested during the January uprising, and the complete abolition of the death penalty require a focused and united struggle. The labor movement, with its organized power; the women’s movement, at the forefront of the struggle for freedom; the student movement, with its energy and awareness; and the organizations of retirees, teachers, lawyers, doctors, artists, and writers, with their experience and social credibility, can unite in a nationwide movement. This movement can organize not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the establishment of a free, equal, and just society without prisons and torture, executions and terror, censorship and repression.
The death penalty is deliberate state killing. We must firmly and decisively defend the right to life against this barbaric punishment. An unconditional and consistent stance against executions, under all circumstances, is not only a human principle but also an inseparable part of the struggle for social justice and freedom.
October 10, which this year falls on October 10 (18 Mehr), is an opportunity to recall this simple yet fundamental truth: life is the inalienable right of every human being, and no government, law, or ideology has the right to take it away.
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Iran
October 8, 2026
