One-day strike by Kurds in Iran demands end to death penalty

By Seth Galinsky
February 10, 2025

A one-day strike shut down businesses and schools all across the Kurdish region of Iran Jan. 22, demanding the revocation of death sentences for Pakhshan Azizi and Warisheh Moradi. These two Kurdish women are accused by Tehran of belonging to the Free Life Party of Kurdistan, one of several groups fighting for the rights of the oppressed Kurdish nationality. The reactionary capitalist regime claims this makes them guilty of “rebellion against the state.”

Azizi had spent several years in displaced persons camps in the Kurdish region of Syria, aiding victims of Islamic State. Both women say they were physically tortured by Iranian jailers and placed in solitary confinement to force them to confess.

“Let us prove once again that Kurdistan will not remain silent in the face of such an inhuman government and will resist,” said the strike call by six Kurdish political parties. They said the strike was “a voice of solidarity with the political prisoners” and “a message of struggle and resistance for all the people of Iran.”

At the same time, “No to Execution Tuesdays” — a weekly hunger strike begun a year ago by political prisoners at Ghezelhesar Prison in Karaj — has spread to 34 prisons across the country. Its 53rd consecutive weekly protest took place Jan. 28.

In the wake of protests that roiled the country after the death of Zhina Amini, a young Kurdish woman, at the hands of the hated “morality” police in 2022, “the government has resorted to expanding executions and intends to create more fear and panic in society to prevent protests,” said a Jan. 14 statement by “No to Execution Tuesdays.” But they haven’t been able to stop workers and farmers from taking to the streets in the face of the deepening capitalist crisis.

Tehran carries out more executions every year than any other government in the world, with the exception of the regime in China. Over 100 prisoners were executed in January.

While most of those executed are accused of criminal offenses, such as drug dealing or murder, the regime has increased executing political prisoners. Some 54 political prisoners are on death row today.

The death penalty and prison sentences are handed down disproportionately to oppressed nationalities. Members of the oppressed Baluch nation comprise just 6% of Iran’s population, but account for 20% of those executed. Kurds are just 10% of the population, but some 50% of political prisoners.

Opponents of the death penalty are calling for the revocation of the death penalty for Mehdi Hasani and Behrouz Ehsani, accused of being members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization.

“The death penalty is a tool in the hands of governments to create terror and an inhuman punishment to bring society into submission and deprive people of the means of life,” said the Free Union of Iranian Workers Jan. 15.

This union, along with the Coordinating Committee of Teachers Unions, the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Drivers Union and the Oil Contract Workers union, are part of the campaign to abolish the death penalty.

“The workers and toilers,” the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Drivers Union said, “must loudly declare our opposition to the death penalty under any pretext.”