{"id":12157,"date":"2018-10-17T11:42:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T15:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=12157"},"modified":"2018-10-17T15:11:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T19:11:00","slug":"irans-death-row-and-political-prisoners-call-for-abolishment-of-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/12157\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s Death-Row and Political Prisoners Call for Abolishment of Death Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

A conference was held<\/a> in the 5th<\/sup>\u00a0arrondissement municipality\u00a0of Paris on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty\u00a0to address the high number of executions in Iran particularly during Rouhani’s presidency. A statement signed by 2,320 prisoners on death row from nine Iranian cities, as well as Iranian political prisoners and the families and relatives of the prisoners was presented at the conference calling for the abolishment of death penalty in Iran.<\/p>\n

Behzad Naziri, a member of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, read out the statement at the conference and told the audience, “I want to draw your attention to news that has been coming out of the Iran’s prisons. Since September 23, the Iranian Resistance has been engaged in a widespread campaign regarding executions in Iran.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an open statement on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty, 2320 death row prisoners from nine prisons in Iran called for the abolishment of the death penalty. According to the officials of the Iranian regime, there are currently more than 5,000 people awaiting execution. You can only imagine at what nightmare they are living,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The statement has the signature of 2,320 prisoners from the following nine prisons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Gohardasht Prison (Karaj)<\/li>\n
  2. Urumiyeh Prison<\/li>\n
  3. Diesel Abad Prison (Kermanshah)<\/li>\n
  4. Dastgerd Prison (Isfahan)<\/li>\n
  5. Mahabad Prison<\/li>\n
  6. Ardebil Prison<\/li>\n
  7. Yazd Prison<\/li>\n
  8. Markazi Prison (Karaj)<\/li>\n
  9. Tehran-e Bozorg Prison<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The statement reads in part:<\/p>\n

    As we approach the World Day Against the Death Penalty, in Iran, 170 people have been executed in the first six months of the Persian year (March-October). We, the signatories, are thousands of Iranian prisoners who are awaiting our deaths behind the bars of Iran\u2019s horrendous prisons.<\/p>\n

    This is how Zaniar Moradi, who was recently executed, described the feelings of a death-row prisoner:<\/p>\n

    \u201cNine years have passed, during which I spent day and night contemplating on the inhumane death sentence. During this period, I always felt the presence of wooden beams and a few meters of rope at my side. Many nights, I imagined my own hanging. It\u2019s been nine years that, day and night, I think about the gallows where I will be hanged, the rope that will be tightened around my neck. I only exhausted myself thinking about this. Every time I heard about the execution of our youth, I thought that my turn has come too\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

    These are the feelings of a prisoner that is awaiting execution. After 40 years of public executions and torture, enough is enough. The gallows are not the answer to the needs and problems of our people.<\/p>\n

    As prisoners whose every day is tied with execution and death, we call on the families of death-row prisoners and all political and human rights activists to join their voices against the death sentence. We ask the international community and human rights institutions to unite for the abolishment of executions in Iran.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A conference was held in the 5th\u00a0arrondissement municipality\u00a0of Paris on the occasion of the World Day Against Death Penalty\u00a0to address the high number of executions […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-human-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12157"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12162,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12157\/revisions\/12162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}