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Hengaw: 56-prison hunger strike on 5 May

3 min read
10:53UTC

Kurdish rights monitor Hengaw documented a hunger strike across 56 Iranian prisons on 5 May, the 119th week of 'No to Executions Tuesdays', alongside the executions of Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour on charges of spying for Israel.

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Key takeaway

Iran's wartime execution rate keeps climbing while the MOU on Araghchi's desk says nothing about detainees.

Hengaw, a Kurdish-Iranian human rights monitor based in Norway, documented a hunger strike across 56 Iranian prisons on 5 May, the 119th week of its "No to Executions Tuesdays" campaign 1. The same documentation recorded the executions of Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour on charges of "spying for Israel". Iran HRM, a separate monitor, has counted at least 26 political executions since 19 March, the campaign's accelerating tail .

"No to Executions Tuesdays" began as a weekly co-ordinated prisoner protest inside Tehran's Evin Prison in late 2023 and has spread across Iran's penal system over the 119 weeks since. Participation tracks repression: prisons join when the execution rate climbs, drop out when guards crack down on individual blocks. Hengaw's count of 56 is the highest single-week tally documented in the strike's run, exceeding the previous peak set during the Mahsa Amini protest cycle.

Iran's revolutionary courts have escalated through the espionage charge. Bakrzadeh and Karimpour were tried on "spying for Israel" indictments, the legal frame Iran's judiciary has used to convert long-standing political detainees into wartime cases since the 19 March escalation. Iran HRM's 26-execution count includes Kurdish prisoners, Baha'i Community members, and detainees originally charged with non-political offences whose cases were reclassified after the war began. The pattern is documented enough that Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran have raised it in standing reports.

The 5 May data point stands apart for its scale. A 56-prison strike requires co-ordination that Iran's intelligence services would normally interrupt. That it landed at all suggests prisoner solidarity now runs across regional, ethnic and confessional lines that the Iranian state has historically been able to exploit. Hengaw's documentation depends on family contacts and former prisoners; figures it publishes are typically conservative because unverifiable cases are excluded.

The MOU's seven enumerated points include no clause on detainees, executions, or political prisoners. The text now in Abbas Araghchi's ministry covers enrichment, HEU transfer, sanctions, frozen funds, Hormuz, the Lebanon ceasefire and the negotiation window; the humanitarian track stays where it is whether or not the MOU is signed. Iran HRM's 26-since-19-March figure will keep climbing in the background of every diplomatic calendar event between now and a written agreement.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

On 5 May, prisoners in 56 Iranian jails went on hunger strike at the same time, the highest single-week prison-protest count in two and a half years. Human rights monitor Hengaw, which tracks Iranian prisons from Norway using family contacts, also documented the executions of two men, Naser Bakrzadeh and Yaqoub Karimpour, on charges of 'spying for Israel.' At least 26 people have been executed on political charges since 19 March. The US-Iran peace proposal being reviewed in Tehran says nothing about prisoners, detainees, or executions; that track sits entirely outside the seven-point framework.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Iran's revolutionary court system has been structurally empowered for rapid capital sentencing since 1979: three-judge panels with no appeals mechanism outside the Supreme Court, closed hearings, and a prosecutor's right to introduce intelligence-agency evidence under state-secrecy rules. The wartime addition of an espionage-for-Israel charge activates a higher-tier prosecution track that the courts can move from indictment to execution in under 30 days.

The 56-prison hunger strike is the first co-ordinated resistance to this acceleration that runs across confessional and ethnic lines. Kurdish, Baha'i, and non-political prisoners are striking simultaneously, suggesting the prison population has absorbed enough wartime executions to override the sectarian divisions that historically fragmented collective prisoner action.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Iran HRM's 26-execution count since 19 March will continue rising regardless of whether the MOU is signed, because the humanitarian track is outside the seven-point framework and the revolutionary court process is structurally independent of Iran's Foreign Ministry.

  • Risk

    A 56-prison co-ordinated strike requires prisoner solidarity across Kurdish, Baha'i and non-political lines that Iran's intelligence services would normally interrupt; if Iranian authorities cannot suppress the co-ordination, it may respond with targeted block-level crackdowns that generate additional casualties outside the execution count.

Sources:NPR·Hengaw
Mentions:Hengaw →Naser Bakrzadeh →Yaqoub Karimpour →Iran →Israel →Evin Prison →Mahsa Amini →UN Special Rapporteur →Norway →Lebanon →Tehran →Ayatollah Khomeini →Abbas Araghchi →Shahid Beheshti University →Amnesty International →Israel-Lebanon ceasefire (April 2026) →
First Reported In

Update #91 · MOU in Tehran, missiles in the strait

NPR· 8 May 2026
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Causes and effects
This Event
Hengaw: 56-prison hunger strike on 5 May
Iran's wartime execution rate is climbing under cover of the conflict, and a 56-prison strike is the largest co-ordinated prisoner action documented in the campaign's two-and-a-half-year run.
Led to
Iran: three secret hangings, 11-13 May
The Bakrzadeh and Karimpour cases established the 55-day arrest-to-execution interval that Shahbakhsh's case replicates, confirming a repeating pattern
Occurred 12 May 2026
Read story →
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