Inmates detained inside one of Iran's largest prisons have for the last two days staged a sit-in protest and a hunger strike against the growing number of executions in the country, rights groups said Wednesday.
The protest at Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj outside Tehran was triggered by the transfer of up to 16 inmates to solitary confinement ahead of execution, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in separate statements.
Prisoners in unit 2 of the prison have, since Monday, refused food rations and staged a sit-in outside their cells in the prison corridors, and were also joined by inmates in other wings, the groups said.
Video, which IHR said was filmed from inside the prison, showed prisoners sitting down and chanting slogans including "no to execution".
The protest has lasted two days, but the situation early Wednesday was not immediately clear.
Families of the prisoners also staged a protest outside the prison gates calling for a halt to the death sentences, another video showed.
According to IHR, which monitors the number of executions daily, Iran has hanged 1,128 people this year, the highest figure since the group started taking records in 2008.
Iran is the world's second most prolific executioner after China, which is believed to execute thousands each year although no precise figures are available, rights groups say.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political wing of the People's Mujahedin (MEK) which is outlawed by Iran, said that 1,500 prisoners were involved in the action. It was not immediately possible to verify the figure.
It said prison authorities had met with prisoners' representatives to ask them to call off the hunger strike, but they had insisted the action would go on until their demands were met.
IHR said that two of the prisoners transferred to solitary confinement had been returned to the general ward, but the others remained under imminent threat of execution.
"Our patience has run out from all this oppression and the taking of prisoners' and youths' lives. Every day and every week, we witness some of our fellow inmates being sent to the gallows, and many of us spend the night haunted by the nightmare of death and the gallows," said a statement in the name of the prisoners circulating on social media, which could not be immediately verified.
Within Iran, the Fars news agency said "counter-revolutionary" media had broadcast video of a prison protest against the execution of inmates who were "extremely violent armed robbers".
The judiciary's Mizan news agency said these inmates had already been executed "after the completion of legal procedures" and the video was part of a campaign to "defame Iran's prisons and spread false claims."
Ghezel Hesar is notorious for the large numbers of hangings inside the prison.
Inmates hanged inside the prison recently in high profile cases include Babak Shahbazi, who was executed on charges of spying for Israel in the wake of the June war with Israel, and Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassan, who were put to death in July on charges of belonging to the MEK.
