Execution as a tool of repression – The Islamic Republic of Iran among the world’s leading violators of the right to life
The World Day Against the Death Penalty was established in 2003 by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) to raise global awareness of the inherent violence, discrimination, and injustice of capital punishment. The day symbolizes international solidarity in defending the fundamental right to life and opposing state executions. Since its inception, it has been observed annually in more than 60 countries to advocate for the global abolition of the death penalty.
The 2025 global theme, “The death penalty protects no one,” is particularly relevant to the situation in Iran today.
Based on verified documentation, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights warns of an unprecedented surge in executions in Iran since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi) movement, marking the highest levels recorded in more than two decades.
According to data compiled by Hengaw’s Statistics and Documentation Center, at least 829 prisoners were executed in 2023, 909 in 2024, and 1,100 so far in 2025 in prisons across Iran.
Of those executed in 2025, at least 579 victims were members of ethnic and national minorities, including 173 Kurds, 140 Lors, 118 Baloch, 108 Turks, and 64 Afghan nationals.
In the same year, the Islamic Republic of Iran recorded the highest number of executions of women in the world, with 33 women executed, and one child offender among those put to death.
Also, in 2025, at least 41 political and religious prisoners have been executed, including 16 individuals who were executed on charges of “spying for Israel.”
The number of executions in Iran rose by 53.5% in 2023 compared to 2022, increasing from 540 to 829. In 2024, the figure grew by another 9.5%, reaching 909.
By October 2025, more than 1,100 prisoners had been executed across the country, with 500 of them executed since the outbreak of the Iran–Israel war on June 13, 2025.
In September 2025 alone, the death sentences of 187 prisoners were carried out, representing a 140% increase compared to 78 executions in September 2024 — the highest monthly total in Iran in 20 years.
Documented evidence indicates that the Iranian authorities are using the sharp rise in drug-related executions to normalize the country’s staggering execution rate and to conceal the executions of political and religious prisoners.
In recent years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out the highest number of executions of women globally. At the same time, charges such as “collaboration with Israel,” particularly against Kurdish people, have increasingly resulted in politically motivated death sentences.
For the first time in years, the authorities have also sentenced female political activists to death, including Sharifeh Mohammadi, Pakhshan Azizi, and Verisheh Moradi, whose cases clearly illustrate the political and repressive use of the death penalty as a tool of intimidation.
Beyond the disproportionate targeting of Kurds, Baloch, Arabs, and Turks, Hengaw has documented multiple cases of enforced disappearance of political prisoners following their executions. This practice constitutes a grave violation of the right to life and human dignity and represents a crime against humanity.
Hengaw Organization for Human Rights considers the death penalty an inherently cruel and unjust punishment that violates the fundamental right to life. The organization emphasizes that many death sentences in Iran are issued through judicial processes that lack transparency, fairness, and due process, serving as political instruments to instill fear and suppress dissent.
The large number of so-called “non-political” executions should not obscure their political nature. Statistical and contextual evidence — including the concentration of drug-related executions in marginalized regions such as Baluchistan, and the execution of women who were victims of domestic violence — reveals the state’s deliberate use of the death penalty as a tool of social and political control.
In solidarity with the global campaign for the abolition of the death penalty, Hengaw once again calls on the international community, human rights organizations, and democratic governments not to remain silent in the face of this machinery of death in Iran, and to use all available diplomatic, legal, and humanitarian mechanisms to ensure the immediate suspension of executions in the country.
