10 February 2025
Iran: Silent Death in Addition to Public Execution
Don’t Let Their Heartbeats Stop!
Hundreds of political prisoners in Iran are facing dire conditions, slowly dying in silence. The Islamic regime has condemned these prisoners to a slow and agonizing death by deliberately depriving them of essential medication and urgent medical care.
While global media remains fixated on nuclear negotiations with Iran, the regime has taken advantage of this distraction to execute hundreds of prisoners. However, public executions are not the only means of eliminating dissidents. The regime in Iran has long employed a covert method of execution by systematically denying medical treatment to political prisoners. This tactic, used for over four decades, has escalated in recent years to avoid international scrutiny, which often follows announcements of political executions.
Numerous reports from prisons in Iran reveal that this method is being applied more routinely and systematically. Many prisoners require medical care for conditions resulting from prison condition and prolonged torture, as well as pre-existing illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. By withholding necessary treatment, authorities ensure the prisoners’ slow death, later attributing their deaths to “natural causes.” Furthermore, depriving prisoners of vital medication serves as an additional form of torture.
Already, dozens of political prisoners have died due to these inhumane practices, and thousands more remain at risk. The Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran (CFPPI) published the first report on the deprivation of political prisoners from medical treatment in 2013. Ban Ki-moon, the General Secretary of the United Nations, included a section on this issue in his report to the sixty-ninth General Assembly of the UN on 12 August 2014, highlighting how the Islamic regime deliberately withholds medical attention from political prisoners. Amnesty International published report in 2016 tilted “Health taken hostage: Cruel denial of medical care in Iran’s prisons”.
Yet, to this day, the international community has failed to hold the regime accountable.
In response, the Global Network to Free Political Prisoners in Iran has launched the campaign “Don’t Let Their Heartbeats Stop” to raise awareness of this silent execution and to save the lives of those at risk.
Objectives of the Campaign:
• To expose the dire conditions faced by political prisoners in Iran.
• To reveal the regime’s practice of covertly executing prisoners by denying them medical care.
• To pressure the regime in Iran to provide prisoners access to specialised medical treatment outside of prison and to release them immediately and unconditionally.
We urge individuals, human rights organizations, and the global community to join this campaign and take action to save the lives of imprisoned activists who have bravely stood against tyranny.
Global Network to Free Political Prisoners in Iran
For more information, media enquiry or to support the campaign, please contact: