As this Friday is World Day Against the Death Penalty, I have been thinking a lot lately about an audio recording I made with my father when I was only six years old. In it, he said to me: “Your heart is your country and currently your country is one big prison. But there will come a day when you will see paradise, and that is when Iran will be free.” The recording is precious to me because those were among the last words my father uttered in my presence. Only months later, the Iranian regime hanged him as punishment for his activism and membership in the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), which was and remains the country’s leading pro-democracy opposition group.

My father was only 33 years old at the time, and I was only six – too young to understand the full context or significance of the words he was leaving behind for me. But as I reached adolescence and then adulthood, I grew to appreciate those sentiments more deeply each time I listened back to them, and soon I found them fueling my own activism as I sought to follow in my father’s noble footsteps. With each passing year, I feel a greater sense of hope that the inspiration my father left behind will indeed help the Iranian people to win their freedom. That hope is strengthened by the knowledge that there have been tens of thousands of Iranian fathers and mothers just like him, who devoted their lives to that cause and made the ultimate sacrifice for it, only for their children, their siblings, their neighbors and colleagues to carry on the fight on their behalf.

I know that it is not only I who was inspired by my father’s sacrifice. My memories of him >are not only of a loving father but also of a man who was deeply committed to the betterment of his community and his nation, and who was adored and admired by almost everyone who knew him. And when I think back on the stories that I have heard about his charity, his labor organizing, and his brave encouragement of resistance to oppression, I find it easy to imagine his contemporaries in other Iranian communities who filled those same roles and exhibited those same qualities and won that same love from those whose lives he touched.

That imagination brings with it a considerable amount of sadness, because I know that countless Iranians with legacies just like my father’s, have been killed by the clerical regime. In the summer of 1988 alone, approximately 30,000 political prisoners were put to death following the implementation of a fatwa from then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, which expressly targeted the MEK and declared their opposition to the theocratic system as “enmity against God.” That vaguely-defined capital crime has continued being used with impunity by Iranian authorities to punish all manner of perceived threats to their grip on power. In July, Fars News Agency, an outlet linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, published an article titled “Why the 1988 Executions Should Be Repeated,” which openly endorsed the mass-killing of political detainees in the thin guise of reinforcing national security.

Unfortunately, the international community has tacitly encouraged this brazenness by remaining relatively silent on Iran’s abuse of the death penalty, which has accelerated dramatically in recent years. The regime for years has maintained its status as the country with the highest rate of executions per capita but following the nationwide uprising that was sparked by the morality police killing of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, Iran’s judiciary began implementing several death sentences each day, almost without interruption. As a result, more than 850 executions were carried out in 2023 and 1,000 in 2024.

Now, with more than two and a half months left in the current year, the regime has already exceeded this figure, and there is no indication that the killing spree is slowing down. In fact, it appears to be accelerating at the same time as it becomes more transparently political.

As a desperate attempt by the regime to forestall any major uprising, it has stepped up its crackdown, particularly aimed at the MEK.

In July, two MEK activists were executed in Tehran after enduring three years of torture. Their final moments were stolen in silence, their lives extinguished by a regime that fears conviction more than crime.

Today, 17 other MEK activists—educated, young, and committed, —languish on death row, facing the imminent threat of execution. These are not criminals; they are voices of dissent, symbols of resistance, and children of a nation yearning to breathe free. Their only “crime” is daring to dream of a democratic Iran.

Many more are likely to follow—unless the international community applies serious and immediate pressure to halt the regime’s execution spree. The time for statements has passed. The time for action is now.

Since 2018, the Iranian people have risen in repeated nationwide uprisings, demanding an end to a regime defined by executions and massacres, and calling for establishment of a democratic republic by themselves. Silence and inaction are not an option. The U.S. and European Union must take decisive political action. As Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has emphasized: governments must condition relations with the mullahs’ regime on ending executions and recognize the Iranian people’s right to resist and overthrow tyranny.

Nearly four decades since my father’s execution, my dream of an Iran where no child is orphaned for their parent’s beliefs has never felt closer. His legacy has never been more within reach.

Safora Sadidi, a human rights advocate, is a member of the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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