Berlin Conference Observes the World Day Against the Death Penalty
Maryam Rajavi: The World Day against the Death Penalty is an opportunity to express our outrage toward the mullahs’ regime, the global record holder of executions
Dear friends,
On this World Day Against the Death Penalty, I pay tribute to the courageous women and men who have been executed and massacred by the mullahs’ regime. They gave their lives, paying the ultimate price for freedom and human rights.
The day against the death penalty is an opportunity to express our anger and outrage toward the mullahs’ regime. This regime holds the global record for executions, carrying out 74% of the world’s recorded executions last year. It stands as the highest executioner of women in the modern world.
This is a regime responsible for the largest massacre of political prisoners since World War II, a regime that, with the killing of at least 1,500 young people in the November 2019 uprising and at least 750 more in the 2022 protests, has set a record for slaughtering its own citizens during public demonstrations.
This is a regime whose leading institution—the office of Ali Khamenei, the mullahs’ supreme leader—serves as the command center for killings, terrorism, and executions. In this government, all factions share a consensus on the practice of executions. Since August, with the inauguration of Khamenei’s new president, 267 individuals have been executed.
The has exposed internal regime documents revealing that over 5,000 prisoners currently face death sentences.
For the past four decades, these executions have targeted a wide array of groups, including political dissidents, Kurds, Baluchis, Turkmens, Arab compatriots, and followers of various religions in Iran.
Three weeks ago, the regime issued death sentences for three supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). This week, the regime’s judiciary began the trial of seven political prisoners accused of Bagh-ye (armed insurgency) on the charge of affiliation with the PMOI—charges punishable by execution.
Sensing their impending downfall, the clerics have turned their efforts toward countering the regime’s primary threat to survival.
In its latest report this July, the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran affirmed that Khamenei and the regime’s highest officials have committed crimes against humanity and genocide. The report urges governments to pursue accountability for the perpetrators of these crimes based on international judicial jurisdiction.
For decades, Western governments have granted impunity to the ruling executioners in Iran for their massacres and relentless, hour-by-hour executions.
Why does a world that has established a “No to the Death Penalty” day to express its shame and moral conscience against capital punishment, continue to tolerate Iran’s regime of executions and massacres?
Export of Terrorism and Fundamentalism, the Regime’s Survival Strategy
Dear friends,
Today, after one year, there remains no doubt that the Iranian regime is the main instigator of the tragic conflict in the Middle East and a principal party in this war. The regime ignites these flames to evade the uprising of the Iranian people. For the past four decades, exporting war, terrorism, and fundamentalism abroad, parallel to domestic repression, has been integral to the regime’s survival strategy.
For 40 years, the Leader of the Iranian Resistance, Massoud Rajavi, has consistently stated that the head of the snake of warmongering and terrorism in this region is the Iranian regime. We reiterated this principled stance on October 7, 2023, yet it fell on the deaf ears of appeasement and was disregarded. Of course, the price has been paid by millions of innocent lives—those killed, injured, and displaced across the Middle East over the years.
Khamenei has repeatedly stated that if he ceases his warmongering beyond Iran’s borders, he will have to confront the uprising of the people in Iranian cities. He squanders the nation’s wealth and keeps the people in poverty to fund proxy groups and expand the war.
Recent events have validated the Iranian Resistance’s view that, as long as this regime has not been overthrown, the cycle of war and terrorism in the region will persist. For years, we have asserted that recognizing the Iranian people’s struggle to overthrow the regime and supporting the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) as a democratic alternative are essential for peace and stability in the region and the world.
The regime invests heavily and mobilizes its agents under various guises—posing as “experts,” “human rights activists,” and even as regime critics—to launch campaigns of misinformation against the democratic opposition. The regime’s goal is to justify the execution and repression of Resistance members and sympathizers and to pave the way for their assassination abroad. More importantly, it aims to convey to the world that no credible alternative exists, leaving the global community with no choice but to accommodate the ruling mullahs.
We Have Risen for an Iran Free from Torture and Executions
Dear friends,
Our resistance, as the primary target of political executions in Iran, has raised the banner for the abolition of the death penalty for over two decades.
Standing against this regime is an organized, dedicated resistance supported by a people pushed to their limit. This resistance has the capacity to bring about the regime’s overthrow and ensure national integrity, free elections, the formation of a Constitutional Assembly to draft a new constitution, and a peaceful transfer of power to the people following the regime’s fall. This roadmap for this transition is outlined in the programs and plans of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
We have risen up for an Iran free from torture, repression, discrimination, inequality, and all forms of dictatorship of both the shah and the mullahs—a republic founded on the separation of religion and state, and a non-nuclear Iran.
The Need for Holding the Regime’s Leaders Accountable for Committing Genocide
Dear friends,
On this World Day Against the Death Penalty, I call upon European countries to take immediate action, as I proposed last week at the Council of Europe:
1. Support the campaign against the death penalty and condition diplomatic and trade relations on the cessation of executions, terrorism, and hostage-taking by the ruling dictatorship in Iran.
2. Hold the regime’s leaders accountable for committing genocide and crimes against humanity.
3. Designate the clerical regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Ministry of Intelligence as terrorist entities and take action against the main officials responsible for executions and massacres, including shutting down their embassies, consulates, as well as their official and unofficial centers, and expelling their agents.
4. Recognize the Iranian people’s struggle and the legitimacy of the youth and Resistance Units’ fight against the Revolutionary Guards to overthrow the clerical regime.
On this World Day Against the Death Penalty, we salute the political prisoners in 22 of Khamenei’s prisons who go on hunger strikes every Tuesday in opposition to executions. We honor those who kissed the gallows in the name of freedom, who stood firm under torture for liberation, and whose sacrifices have turned the “azure raiment of the horizon” crimson.
Thank you all.
