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As Iranian authorities carry out executions at a pace unmatched in decades, death row prisoners and political detainees across the country have sustained an extraordinary act of resistance: a weekly hunger strike against the death penalty that has continued for more than 120 consecutive weeks and spread to 56 prisons across the country.

For more than two years, prisoners across Iran have staged these weekly hunger strikes in protest against the state’s escalating and unlawful use of the death penalty. This campaign of resistance, by Iran’s most vulnerable people against the Islamic Republic’s most inhumane state practice, is known as “No to Execution Tuesdays.”

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The prisoners themselves made a conscious decision from the outset to reject distinctions between political prisoners, ordinary criminal defendants, drug defendants, qisas cases, and others facing execution, instead putting the spotlight where it should be—that all executions in Iran are carried out unlawfully, after sham prosecutions and unfair trials.

At a moment when executions in Iran have reached alarming levels and political hangings are rapidly increasing, these prisoners have sustained one of the most visible and enduring campaigns against the death penalty inside Iran.

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More Than 2100 Hanged in 2025: The Deadliest Year for Executions in Decades

The Islamic Republic of Iran is the leading per capita executioner in the world. In absolute numbers, it is second only to China.

Executions in the Islamic Republic violate every single international legal standard on the use of the death penalty. They are carried out for religious and political “crimes” and for drug offenses that are all impermissible under international law, and they are routinely handed down following grossly unfair trials, with defendants denied access to independent legal counsel and convicted solely on the basis of forced “confessions” that were extracted under torture.

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