While Islamist repression in Iran and Afghanistan multiplies public executions, whippings and death sentences, Europe remains silent: no streets, no mobilization, no organized indignation for documented and verified crimes.
In 2025, repression in Islamic regimes has reached levels unparalleled in recent history. In Iran and in Afghanistangoverned by Talibanstate violence has resulted in an escalation of executions, corporal punishment And spectacularization of deathused as political tools to terrorize the population and stifle any form of dissent. In Iran, the number of executions set an all-time record. In the solo 2025 they were executed 2,201 prisoners: more than double compared to 2024, two and a half times compared to 2023 and almost four times compared to 2022. A surge that follows a precise curve: as the regime weakens and social discontent grows, repression increases. The second half of the year saw a number of executions more than double compared to the first six months, with an unprecedented peak in December 2025, when they were registered 376 hangings in just one monththe highest figure in the last 37 years. The death machine spared no one. Among the victims there are at least 64 womenalmost double compared to the previous year, and six people who were minors at the time of the crime. Thirteen executions were carried out in public, with the declared aim of intimidating the population: a cruelty deliberately exhibited, transforming capital punishment into an instrument of terror propaganda. Hangings have affected people since 18 to 71 years old, with an average age of 36 years, and took place in 97 cities in 31 provincesconfirming the desire to extend the climate of fear to the entire national territory. According to the National Council of Iranian Resistancethese are arbitrary and collective mass executions, attributable to organized crime and a crime against humanity. The political message is clear: faced with protests by traders and citizens, which erupted in Tehran and other cities at the end of 2025, the regime responded by clinging to the gallows, incapable of governing except through violence. At the same time, the number of death sentences against political prisoners has increased, in particular on charges of links with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran. At least 18 political prisoners are today awaiting execution, while a mock trial against 104 members of the Resistance prepares the ground for new waves of repression.
But theIran is not an exception. In Afghanistan, under the control of TalibanThe 2025 it marked a normalization of public violence. According to official data from Taliban Supreme Court, beyond 1,030 people were whipped in public in just one year, including at least 150 women. This is almost double the number compared to previous years. Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban has subjected at least 1,848 people to public floggings, making corporal punishment a structural practice of their justice system. Public executions were added to the whippings. In 2025, at least three death sentences were carried out in front of large crowds in Khost, Badghis and Paktia provinces. In one of the most shocking cases, a man was executed in front of tens of thousands of spectators, with the sentence carried out by a 13-year-old – an episode that sparked international outrage but illustrates the brutality with which the Taliban regime uses religion as a tool of domination. Overall, in the last four years, at least 178 death sentences have been issued according to the qisas principle, as well as stoning sentences and sentences involving the collapse of walls on the condemned.
Human rights organizations have long denounced that these practices systematically violate international law. In Afghanistan, as in Iranrepression is not an isolated excess, but a government strategy: creating fear, publicly humiliating, destroying individual dignity. The residents of Kabul they describe a country transformed into an open-air prison, where men and women are punished in front of the crowd to strengthen social controlThe international community has condemned these practices on several occasions. The United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an immediate end to corporal punishment and executions. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Taliban leaders for crimes against humanity and gender-based persecution. But the Islamic regimes involved continue to reject any criticism, claiming the application of an alleged religious law. The 2025 data show an unequivocal picture: when Islamist power enters into crisis, it responds with increasingly ferocious violence. Gallows and whip become instruments of government, and cruelty is not a side effect, but the very heart of the system. Yet, faced with these crimes ascertained, documented and claimed by the regimes themselves, Europe remains silent. No mass mobilization, no packed squares, no organized indignation. The public executions in Iran, the floggings of women and men in Afghanistan, the death sentences imposed in the name of religion do not spark protests, do not generate marches, do not produce permanent campaigns. An obvious disproportion, which raises inevitable questions. Why is there a global mobilization for some victims and not for others? Why does the terror exercised by Islamic regimes never become a political cause in Europe? The question, uncomfortable but legitimate, also concerns the role of funding, organizational networks, ideological agendas that transform some tragedies into symbols and others into silence. Without sponsors, without apparatus, without expendable narratives, even hanging and whipping can become invisible.
