A mass hunger strike by prisoners on death row at Qezel Hesar, amplified by families and a broad civic coalition, won a six-month suspension of executions. The pause is fragile—and conditional—but it shows the power of resistance and solidarity.
An in-prison campaign, families rallying outside, and an unusual wave of civic solidarity forced a temporary retreat of the execution machinery. On Sunday, 19 October 2025 (27 Mehr 1404), after six days of a mass hunger strike at Qezel Hesar Prison [explain where it is located], an envoy of the judiciary chief met striking prisoners in Ward 2 and pledged a six-month suspension of executions, with Parliament to review reforms to the death penalty. Prisoners ended the strike “temporarily and conditionally.”
How it began
At noon on Monday, 13 October (21 Mehr), authorities transferred 16 prisoners to solitary confinement for imminent execution. The protest ignited in Ward 2 and spread the next day to Wards 3 and 4. Reports indicated that roughly 1,500 death prisoners—mostly on death row—joined the strike, one of the largest collective prison protests in recent years. Families gathered outside Qezel Hesar and in front of Parliament, demanding an immediate halt to brutal executions.
Silencing attempts
By day five (Friday, 17 October), prison authorities escalated security measures, moved some protesters to solitary, and reportedly used signal jammers to cut phone and internet access. Even so, messages leaked out: “The gallows must go… Support us by any means you can.”
In their statement on Tuesday, the strikers wrote: “Our patience has run out from this endless cruelty… Many of us spend the night with the nightmare of death,” appealing to the public to gather outside prisons and raise their voices. Reports from that night said several prisoners’ health had already deteriorated, with no medical assistance provided. Despite the protest, the judiciary’s news agency announced further executions mid-week, underscoring the stakes of the strike.
Solidarity inside and out
The “Tuesdays Against Execution” campaign—active for over 90 weeks across 52 prisons and born inside Qezel Hesar—issued a support statement and warned of grave risk to prisoners’ lives. Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi publicly backed the strike (17 October): “Let us be the voice of thousands on death row.”
In parallel, “over 800 cultural, artistic, and political figures” released a statement titled “Execution Ends Justice,” calling the current wave of executions a sign of legal and moral collapse and endorsing the protest.
The darker backdrop: medical neglect as a death sentence
In the same period, Human Rights Watch reported that three women died in Qarchak Prison in the past month due to denial of medical care—among them political prisoner Somayeh Rashidi, 42—underscoring a policy of systematic medical deprivation that violates the right to life. On 16 October (24 Mehr), Amnesty International urged UN member states to press Iran to halt executions immediately.
Why Qezel Hesar?
In 2024, Qezel Hesar reportedly led all Iranian prisons with at least 150 executions. The surge there again exposes how capital punishment in Iran functions not only as a sentence, but as a tool of social control and collective punishment—tightly bound to structural poverty, marginalisation, and a punitive criminal policy.
What this pause means
If implemented, the six-month suspension is a direct outcome of prisoners’ resistance and broad civic solidarity. But because the halt is “temporary and conditional,” and the laws and routines remain intact, the risk of renewed executions persists. The campaign’s core claim is simple: a justice system should allow for repair, restitution, and return. Execution destroys that possibility at its root.
Call to action
The voice from inside Qezel Hesar is a warning:
“No to execution, yes to life; no to structural violence, yes to restorative justice.”
Silence normalises the machinery of elimination. It is a moral and civic duty to make the halt and abolition of the death penalty a public demand—at home and internationally.
