2026-07-26

The hunger strike by prisoners in Unit 2 of Qezel Hesar Prison, which began on Monday, July 13, 2026, in protest against the transfer of six death row prisoners to solitary confinement, has now entered its thirteenth day. The prisoners have voiced their opposition to death sentences, particularly in cases involving drug related offenses, by staging a sit-in inside their ward and refusing prison meals. Reports from inside the prison describe a serious decline in the strikers’ physical condition, the prison authorities’ deliberate indifference, and the judiciary’s refusal to address their demands. These actions form part of a deliberate policy that uses even the endangerment of prisoners’ lives as a tool to intimidate society.

The hunger strike by prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison and the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign continue as the Islamic Republic has turned the repeated issuance and implementation of death sentences into a central mechanism and pillar of survival for a government in deep crisis. As the Islamic Republic faces profound economic and political crises, with rising unemployment, runaway inflation, soaring prices, and widespread public discontent further eroding its political legitimacy, it has relied more than ever on organized violence, death sentences, and open repression. For this regime, escalating repression and executions have become a key pillar of its survival strategy and a tactic to instill fear and prevent the emergence and expansion of social protests.

As workers, toilers, and the vast majority of Iranians struggle with the devastating consequences of a reactionary and unwanted war, in which the Islamic Republic is one of the principal parties, the regime’s leaders have used the cover of war to intensify repression and spread fear. Past experience has repeatedly shown that whenever society comes under the pressure of war, insecurity, and crisis, the Islamic Republic expands arrests, fabricates national security cases, and increases the use of executions. Reactionary war and repression are two sides of the same policy aimed at preserving the capitalist rule of the Islamic Republic. Their primary victims are workers, toilers, women, young people, and all those who struggle for freedom. Under conditions of war and repression, it is the lives and livelihoods of society’s most vulnerable that are destroyed, while their protest movements are pushed to the margins.

The Communist Party of Iran once again declares its support for the resistance and steadfastness of the striking prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison in their protest against the death penalty and for the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign. The Party also condemns the pressure and restrictions imposed on the hunger strikers and holds the Islamic Republic, along with its security and judicial institutions, directly responsible for any harm inflicted on the protesting prisoners. The Communist Party of Iran regards the death penalty as an organized form of state violence and state sanctioned killing. No government should have the right to take human life. The struggle against the death penalty forms an inseparable part of the broader struggle for freedom, equality, and the liberation of society from exploitation, oppression, and repression. The Party believes that the main front in the struggle against the death penalty and for the freedom of political prisoners must extend beyond prison walls. Efforts should focus on making the demand for the release of political prisoners and the abolition of the death penalty a central demand of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the student movement, and all progressive social movements. Only by expanding and building a mass movement for the freedom of political prisoners and the abolition of the death penalty can the Islamic Republic’s machinery of repression and execution be brought to a halt.

Outside Iran, all socialist, left wing, and progressive political parties, organizations, and institutions, together with all people who believe in freedom and equality, should join forces to organize political campaigns that increase pressure on the criminal regime of the Islamic Republic to end executions and release political prisoners. Supporting the striking prisoners in Qezel Hesar Prison and the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign, defending the lives of prisoners, and opposing the Islamic Republic’s machinery of execution form part of the common struggle to end a system that has built its survival on poverty, war, repression, and killing.

Free All Political Prisoners!
Abolish the Death Penalty!
Down with the Islamic Republic of Iran!
Freedom, Equality, Workers’ Government!

Central Committee of the Communist Party of Iran
July 26, 2026