Iranian Kurdish civil activist Pakhshan Azizi has been sentenced to death, prompting widespread protests from social media users and human rights organizations. These protests have condemned the Islamic Republic for its harsh treatment of female activists. Azizi’s lawyers received the verdict on Tuesday.
This is the second death sentence issued to a female political prisoner in Iran in recent weeks. Earlier, Sharifeh Mohammadi, a labor activist detained in Lakan Prison in Rasht, was also sentenced to death by the Islamic Revolutionary Court of the city on charges of rebellion.
“I can’t believe it … I can’t believe it. Pakhshan Azizi’s brother announced that Pakhshan has received a death sentence. I can’t believe it, what kind of nightmare is this, girl… ,” Atefeh Nabavi, a civil activist and former political prisoner, wrote in a post on the social network X.
The Hengaw Human Rights Organization, a Kurdish advocacy group, emphasized that Azizi was sentenced to death while “she has been denied access to a lawyer and family visits for several months, and her legal proceedings have been conducted in a non-transparent and unjust manner.”
Hengaw recently released a letter from Azizi, in which she said she had been subjected to repeated torture and hanging during her detention.
“They are exacting revenge on female activists in the most brutal manner,” Fatemeh Shahrazad Shams, a women’s rights activist, said. “The repeated issuance of death sentences, long-term imprisonments, exiles, and the imposition of suspicious illnesses on female prisoners are ongoing crimes committed by the Islamic Republic against women. We must not remain silent in the face of these brutal injustices.”
The Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported that Pakhshan Azizi’s death sentence coincides with the case of another Kurdish activist, Wrisha Moradi, a member of the East Kurdistan Free Women Society (KJAR), who is awaiting sentencing on similar charges following her arrest in Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province.
Azizi was arrested on August 4, 2023, by the Ministry of Intelligence in Kharazi, Tehran. She was subjected to interrogation and torture at the Intelligence Detention Center before being transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison and later to the women’s ward. She was charged with “rebellion through membership in opposition groups.”
She appeared before Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari, on May 28 and June 16, 2024, to respond to the charge of rebellion. Just two days before the announcement of her death sentence, Azizi wrote a letter titled “Concealment of Truth and Its Alternative,” detailing her experiences of arrest and torture by security agencies. This letter was received by Hengaw and published on July 21.
Azizi has a history of arrests, having been first detained in November 2009 during a student protest against political executions in Kurdistan. She was subsequently released on bail of 100 million tomans on March 19, 2010. Throughout her activism, she has consistently faced accusations of membership in opposition groups, which she has firmly denied.
The security and judicial apparatus of the Islamic Republic frequently imposes severe charges on detained activists, leading to harsh sentences, a practice that has drawn significant criticism from human rights organizations globally.
