Persian slogan and hashtag meaning no to execution. Used by Iranian abolitionists, protest movements, and diaspora activists to oppose the Islamic Republic's use of capital punishment, especially against detained protesters.
Operates as both a long-running abolitionist position and a real-time tactical hashtag. Activists chain it with the name and case of each defendant facing a death warrant, forcing the case into the news cycle for as long as possible.
Na-be-edam is the slogan that does not need a translation. It is no, and it is to execution, and the wager is that if enough people say no the rope frays a little.
Learners following Iranian human rights coverage will see this slogan in every protest cycle. Recognizing it lets them follow the case-by-case organizing rather than guessing at it.
نه به اعدام (na-be-edam) is Persian for no to execution. نه (na) no, به (be) to, اعدام (edam) execution. As a hashtag it ran continuously across Persian Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram from late 2022 onward, with weekly spikes whenever the regime carried out or announced new executions of protesters. Iranian unions, lawyers, families of the condemned, and diaspora activists post the slogan in chains, each post naming a specific defendant. The slogan is broader than the protest movement, it predates 2022 in the work of Iranian abolitionists, but the Mahsa cycle made it visible at scale outside Iran for the first time.
Sources
- Iran Human Rights: 2022 protest execution tracking
- Amnesty International: Stop the execution of Iranian protesters
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