A Case Study in Repression: The Life and Threatened Death of Zahra Shahbaz Tabari
In the corner of a modest home in Rasht, a 67-year-old electrical engineer kept a small piece of cloth. It was not a manifesto or a weapon. It read, simply: “Woman, Resistance, Freedom.” That cloth — along with an unpublished voice note found on her phone — is what the authorities now call “evidence” that Zahra Shahbaz Tabari deserves to die.
According to her family, agents came at night. They searched the house, seized the cloth and the audio file, and took Ms. Tabari away. Weeks later, she appeared by video for a hearing that, her relatives say, lasted roughly 10 minutes. There was no independent lawyer at her side, no real chance to examine evidence or speak in her own defense. She was sentenced to death and transferred to Lakan Prison in Rasht. Ten days: that was the time the family was told they had to appeal a capital judgment.
If you want to understand how fragile life has become for Iran’s peaceful dissidents, start here — with a mother and retired engineer whose “crime,” as described by officials, is symbolic speech and the suspicion that she sympathizes with organized opposition. Ms. Tabari’s son, Soroush Samak, said, “My mother is not afraid of death … every execution only deepens public anger.” His words are grief and analysis at once: in a country where the government has turned slogans, reposts and voice notes into “national security” evidence, the gallows are not just a punishment but a message.
To many outside Iran, the label PMOI/MEK — an organized resistance advocating a non-nuclear democratic republic and championed by Maryam Rajavi — can feel distant, abstract, a tangle of acronyms. For the people who risk their freedom to hold a banner or share a recording, it is far simpler. It is about insisting, with unwavering determination, that Iranians deserve accountable government and basic rights. It is about believing that a life of dignity is not treason.
That belief is precisely what the state now works to criminalize. In the months after last summer’s regional hostilities, Iranian authorities reframed domestic dissent as an extension of foreign subversion. Prosecutors began to translate political expression into capital charges: “espionage,” “collaboration,” even “false information” posted online. Courts accelerated cases, sometimes to the point of ritual — hearings measured in minutes, judgments sealed from public view, appeals reduced to a race against the calendar. The result has been a spike in executions and a chilling message to anyone who might share a slogan, pass a leaflet, or lend a room for a meeting: the smallest act can be recast as an existential threat to the state.
Nowhere is this more clearly on display than in the four-day period between November 15 and 19, when Iranian authorities executed at least 59 prisoners — one every two hours. Among them were young men barely in their twenties, political detainees whose names remain unpublicized, and ordinary inmates swept into the conveyor belt of state violence. This is not due process; it is throughput. It signals a government that wants the world to understand it is willing to kill at scale — and quickly — while the window for appeals slams shut.
This accelerating pace of death did not go unnoticed. On November 19, 2025, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Iran’s “gross and systematic” human-rights violations — the 72nd such resolution since the Islamic Republic was founded. It denounced the alarming increase in executions, the use of the death penalty as a tool against dissent, and the rising number of executions of women and minors. It cited enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, destruction of evidence, and impunity that “allows for repetition.” The world rarely speaks so clearly. The tragedy is that clarity comes after the hangings, not before.
But Ms. Tabari is not a firebrand. She earned a master’s degree in sustainable energy at the University of Borås in Sweden, returned to Iran and lived a quiet life. Years before the night raid, she was briefly detained over a social-media post and then released with an electronic ankle tag — a signal that the state had marked her for watching. When agents came again this spring, the case moved fast: a cloth, a voice note, a video hearing, a verdict. If you sense the outline of a template, you are not wrong. This is how a government turns innocence into inference and inference into the irreversible.
Inside Iran’s prisons, people understand exactly what is happening. In Ghezel Hesar, about 1,500 inmates undertook a four-day hunger strike and issued a bleak statement: “Either kill us all or let us die on hunger strike.” It is hard to read that sentence and not hear the ticking of the clock that the authorities have built into this system — the 10-minute hearing, the 10-day appeal, the countdown from sentencing to the scaffold. Political prisoners are trying to survive a few more days, hoping that someone, somewhere, will slow the machine.
Why does the regime press so hard against people like Ms. Tabari? Because spontaneous anger can be waited out, but organized conscience is dangerous. The state’s repression calculus focuses on PMOI/MEK supporters and other disciplined networks not because they are violent, but because they are credible — able to carry a narrative of freedom from one household to the next. A banner in Rasht can become a banner in Ahvaz or Mashhad; a voice note that never posts still testifies to the spirit that recorded it. So the state has developed a simple doctrine: conflate a political actor with a criminal one. Call a banner “propaganda for a hostile organization.” Call a repost “psychological operations.” Call a mother’s voice note “collaboration.” Then call the gallows justice.
This is more than law twisted by politics; it is politics abolished by law. The right to life, the right to a fair trial, the right to peaceful expression — these are not Western ornaments. They are human guarantees precisely because every society needs a zone where ideas can breathe without fear. When a 67-year-old woman faces death for a piece of cloth and an unshared recording, the zone is gone.
There are those who will say that Iran’s choices are Iran’s business. But the government itself has made this international, by claiming to be under foreign attack and by treating peaceful citizens as enemy assets. When the state turns speech into espionage, it asks the world to accept that the line between opinion and treason no longer exists. No country should accept that.
What should we do, beyond bearing witness?
First, name the method. In every statement and headline, separate political expression from violent crime. Do not repeat the language that erases the difference.
Second, invoke the obligations Iran has already accepted. As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally bound to uphold the right to life (Article 6), the right to a fair trial (Article 14), and the right to freedom of expression (Article 19). Executing people for banners, voice notes, or peaceful association — through minutes-long hearings with no independent counsel — is not only immoral; it is a treaty violation. Diplomats should say so plainly, and condition engagement on visible compliance: independent counsel of choice, reasonable preparation time, public judgments, and a moratorium on executions for non-violent political expression. Where officials — including judges and prosecutors — impose death sentences after sham proceedings, targeted sanctions and accountability measures should follow.
Third, protect the people who carry the truth. Families, lawyers, and local documenters are at immediate risk. They need visas, protective pathways, and rapid international support. Platforms must help preserve evidence — voice notes, posts, images — against coerced deletion. Every file that survives makes it harder to deny what was done.
And finally, hold the line on hope. Ms. Tabari’s son is clear-eyed: his mother, he says, does not fear death. But courage is not immunity. It is a gift to the living — a wager that we will use our freedom to help others keep theirs.
In the end, what Ms. Tabari’s case reveals is not only one woman’s peril but a plot: to eliminate political prisoners who are trying to survive just a few more days, to turn the calendar itself into a weapon. If you remember one thing, let it be that image — a clock in a prison hallway, counting down a life for a banner and a voice.
And now, with 59 executions in four days, the clock is running faster than ever.
What we expect now is modest, urgent, and entirely within the international community’s power:
A clear, public demand for a halt to political executions, grounded in Iran’s obligations under Articles 6, 14, and 19 of the ICCPR.
Open case files and independent counsel for those facing security-labeled charges — not as favors, but as treaty-mandated rights.
Targeted consequences for officials who turn speech into “espionage” and impose death sentences without due process.
Protection for the families, lawyers, and defenders standing between the condemned and the scaffold.
The plight of those on death row today does not permit a slower timetable.
They are waiting, counting hours now — not days.
Our duty is to make sure they are not counting alone.
For institutions, researchers, and policymakers seeking deeper insights, an 8,000-word analytical white paper—including legal mapping, UN-aligned due-process analysis, and a full breakdown of Iran’s evolving repression model—is available for commissioned work or professional collaboration.
This analysis also forms part of a broader portfolio on Middle Eastern geopolitics, with a special focus on Iran, its internal dynamics, and its impact on regional stability.
Professionals who wish to pursue this case, or the wider landscape of state repression and regional strategy, may request the full study.
Jalal Arani - Connect Here
او پارچهای در دست داشت که روی آن نوشته بود «زن، مقاومت، آزادی». حالا در انتظار اعدام است.
یک اعدام هر دو ساعت: ماشین کشتار معترضان در ایران
در گوشه خانهای ساده در رشت، یک مهندس برق ۶۷ ساله تکهای پارچه نگه میداشت.
نه پیام محرمانهای بود، نه سلاحی. فقط یک جمله روی آن نوشته شده بود:
«زن، مقاومت، آزادی».
اما همین پارچه — همراه یک فایل صوتی منتشرنشده در تلفنش — اکنون از نظر حکومت «مدرکی» است برای اینکه زهرا شهباز طبری باید بمیرد.
طبق گفته خانوادهاش، مأموران شبانه آمدند، خانه را گشتند، پارچه و فایل صوتی را ضبط کردند و زهرا را بردند. چند هفته بعد، او در یک جلسه ویدئویی ظاهر شد؛ جلسهای که خانواده میگویند حدود ده دقیقه طول کشید. نه وکیل مستقل داشت و نه فرصت دفاع. حکم اعدام صادر شد و او را به زندان لاکان رشت منتقل کردند. خانواده ده روز فرصت داشتند به حکم مرگ اعتراض کنند.
اگر میخواهید بفهمید زندگی dissidentهای صلحطلب در ایران چقدر شکننده شده، از همینجا شروع کنید — مادری بازنشسته که «جرمش» یک پارچه و یک فایل صوتی معرفینشده است.
پسرش، سروش سماک، میگوید:
«مادرم از مرگ نمیترسد… هر اعدامی فقط خشم مردم را بیشتر میکند.»
در کشوری که شعار، بازنشر یا یک فایل صوتی میتواند تبدیل به اتهام «امنیتی» شود، چوبه دار فقط مجازات نیست — پیام است.
برای بسیاری در خارج، نامهای PMOI/MEK شاید پیچیده یا دور باشد. اما برای کسانی که چنین ریسکهایی میکنند، موضوع ساده است:
ایرانیان شایسته یک حکومت پاسخگو و حقوق اولیه انسانیاند.
این باور، همان چیزی است که حکومت میخواهد جرمانگاری کند.
پس از تنشهای منطقهای تابستان گذشته، حکومت ایران مخالفت داخلی را «جنگ نیابتی» معرفی کرد و ابراز عقیده سیاسی را به «جاسوسی» یا «همکاری با دشمن» ترجمه کرد. دادگاهها در چند دقیقه حکم صادر میکنند؛ بدون شفافیت، بدون زمان مناسب برای دفاع، بدون وکیل مستقل. نتیجه؟
افزایش شدید اعدامها و یک پیام هراسافکن برای هر کسی که شاید یک شعار بنویسد، تراکت پخش کند یا جلسهای در خانهاش برگزار کند.
اوج این سیاست بین ۱۵ تا ۱۹ نوامبر بود:
۵۹ اعدام در چهار روز — یعنی یک اعدام هر دو ساعت.
روز ۱۹ نوامبر ۲۰۲۵، کمیته سوم مجمع عمومی سازمان ملل یک قطعنامه درباره «نقض فاحش و سیستماتیک حقوق بشر در ایران» تصویب کرد — هفتاد و دومین قطعنامه از زمان تأسیس جمهوری اسلامی. قطعنامه به افزایش اعدامها، استفاده از مجازات مرگ علیه مخالفان، اعدام زنان و نوجوانان، ناپدیدسازی قهری و نبود پاسخگویی اعتراض کرد.
اما زهرا طبری آتشافروز سیاسی نبود. فوقلیسانس انرژی پایدار از سوئد داشت و زندگی آرامی را در ایران ادامه میداد. پیش از این یک بار بخاطر پست شبکه اجتماعی بازداشت شد و با پابند آزاد شد — نشانهای که حکومت او را «زیر نظر» داشت. این بار پرونده با سرعت پیش رفت: یک پارچه، یک فایل صوتی، یک جلسه ده دقیقهای، یک حکم اعدام.
در زندانها نیز همه میدانند چه میگذرد. در قزلحصار، ۱۵۰۰ زندانی چهار روز اعتصاب غذا کردند و نوشتند:
«یا همه ما را بکشید یا بگذارید با اعتصاب بمیریم.»
سؤال اصلی این است: چرا حکومت اینقدر به سراغ آدمهایی مثل زهرا میرود؟
چون خشم خودجوش میآید و میرود، اما وجدان سازمانیافته خطرناک است.
حکومت روی هواداران سازمانیافته (از جمله PMOI/MEK) تمرکز میکند زیرا خشونتطلب نیستند، اما قابل اعتماد، منسجم و تأثیرگذارند.
در ایران امروز، کافی است یک دولت، یک بنر را «تبلیغ سازمان معاند» و یک فایل صوتی را «همکاری» بنامد و یک مادر را راهی چوبه دار کند.
انسان وقتی یک زن ۶۷ ساله را بخاطر پارچهای ساده محکوم به مرگ میکنند، میفهمد که «حق زندگی» و «حق بیان» در عمل حذف شده است.
حکومت ایران خودش موضوع را بینالمللی کرده است؛ با متهمکردن شهروندان عادی به «همکاری با دشمن». وقتی سخن به «جاسوسی» تبدیل شد، جهان دیگر نمیتواند ساکت باشد.
چه باید کرد؟
۱) روش حکومت را نام ببرید:
بیان = جرم نیست.
۲) ایران به میثاق حقوق مدنی و سیاسی متعهد است:
ماده ۶ – حق زندگی
ماده ۱۴ – دادرسی عادلانه
ماده ۱۹ – آزادی بیان
۳) حمایت فوری از خانوادهها، زندانیان و وکلایی که در خطرند.
۴) امید را زنده نگه دارید.
شجاعت زهرا طبری هدیهای به نسل امروز است؛ نه برای اینکه بمیرد، بلکه برای اینکه حرفش شنیده شود.
در پایان، او تنها یک نفر نیست؛ او الگویی از یک سیاست حکومتی است:
تبدیل تقویم به سلاح — تبدیل روزها به ساعتها — تبدیل ساعتها به لحظههای پیش از اعدام.
اکنون، با ۵۹ اعدام در چهار روز، ساعتها سریعتر از همیشه میگذرد.
