DISBELIEF: When One Execution Makes Headlines While Others Fade Into Silence
There are moments when I read the news and simply cannot understand the world anymore.
This week, one of those moments arrived.
The failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee has made international headlines. Pike was convicted of the brutal 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. On September 30, 2026, Tennessee attempted to execute Pike by lethal injection. The execution went terribly wrong. She survived, was hospitalized in critical condition and has since regained consciousness and begun speaking. The incident led Tennessee's governor to suspend executions for the remainder of the year and order an independent investigation.
And yes, we should talk about it.
We should question what happened.
We should question the death penalty.
We should question whether any state should have the power to deliberately end a human life and what happens when an execution itself becomes prolonged suffering.
But while I was watching these headlines, another question would not leave my mind:
What about Iran?
Where are their headlines?
Iranian protesters have been sentenced to death and executed.
According to the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, at least 29 men connected to the protests were executed between March and August 31, 2026, five of them publicly. More than 70 people - including women and boys - were reported to be at imminent risk of being sentenced to death or executed in connection with the protests.
The UN has also reported grave concerns about the judicial process behind these cases: violations of due process and fair-trial guarantees, forced confessions, and denial of access to lawyers of the defendants' choosing. UN experts have separately intervened in individual cases involving people facing execution amid allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, and unfair proceedings.
These aren't numbers to me.
They are people.
They had mothers.
They had fathers.
They had friends.
They had dreams.
They had homes they expected to return to.
And this is where my disbelief begins.
I am not asking anyone to care less about Christa Pike
Let me make this absolutely clear.
This is not about saying that one human being deserves suffering because she committed a terrible crime.
Nor am I comparing the lives of victims or suggesting that one tragedy should replace another in the news.
Colleen Slemmer's life mattered.
Christa Pike's treatment by the state raises serious questions.
And the lives of Iranian prisoners facing execution matter too.
Human rights cannot depend on which passport somebody carries or which story happens to dominate the news cycle.
That is the point.
If watching one execution go horribly wrong makes us uncomfortable enough to ask difficult questions about justice, punishment and human dignity, then surely we should also be able to look toward Iran and ask those questions there.
آخه تا کی؟ — How much longer?
As an Iranian-Swiss songwriter watching what has been happening in Iran, there are days when words fail me.
And then two very simple Persian questions remain:
Those words became the beginning and ending of my new song, “Disbelief.”
The song opens my new album, the third album in which I am documenting this period through music.
I didn't know what the first song on this album would be.
I decided not to invent one.
I said:
History will write the prompt.
Unfortunately, it did.
We cannot say we didn't know
We live in a time when information travels around the planet within seconds.
That makes silence different from the silence of previous generations.
We see photographs.
We read names.
We watch videos.
Human-rights organizations document cases.
United Nations investigators publish reports.
The information exists.
And that is why one line in Disbelief matters particularly to me:
I am a songwriter. I cannot stop an execution.
I cannot open a prison door.
I cannot decide which story appears on tomorrow's front page.
But I can write.
I can document.
I can refuse to let names become numbers and numbers disappear into yesterday's news.
Not predicting history.
Not pretending I know how this chapter will end.
Simply witnessing it while it happens.
And asking the questions that still have no answer:
آخه تا کی؟
عدالت چی شد؟
How much longer?
What happened to justice?
