EXECUTIONS IN IRAN - JUDICIALLY SANTTIONED GENOSIDE

EXECUTIONS IN IRAN

JUDICIALLY SANTTIONED GENOSIDE

Stes de Necker

Iran’s staggering execution toll paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carrying out premeditated, judicially-sanctioned killings on a mass scale.

Capital punishment in Iran is legal. Crimes punishable by death include murder, rape, child molestation, sodomy, drug trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism and treason.

Each year Amnesty International reports both the number of officially acknowledged executions in Iran and the number of executions the organization has been able to confirm took place, but which were not officially acknowledged. When calculating the annual global total number of executions Amnesty International has, to date, only counted executions officially acknowledged by the Iranian authorities.

EXECUTIONS DURING THE PERIOD 2005 TO 2014

 According to Amnesty International, there were 676 executions in Iran in 2011, 753 (of which 14 women and 13 juveniles) in 2014 and 694 in the first half of 2015.

According to Iranian public sources however, 252 executions (of which 5 women and 1 juvenile) were carried out in 2011, 289 in 2014 and 246 in the first half of 2015. Up to 74% were drug related, and almost all executions were carried out for murder, aggravated rape, deadly robbery/kidnapping, or large scale drug trafficking. (In 2014, the Iranian authorities reported that 289 people were executed according to official sources, but credible reports suggested that the real figure was at least 743.)

In March 2016, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran said in a report to the organization's Human Rights Council that at least 966 people were put to death in the country in 2015, roughly double the number executed in 2010 and 10 times as many as were executed in 2005. The report noted that executions in Iran were at the highest level since 1989.

Among those executed in Iran are also members of ethnic and religious minorities convicted of “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth” including Kurdish political prisoners and Sunni Muslims.

Currently, based on monitoring work done by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, several thousand people are believed to be on death row in Iran. The Iranian authorities have said that 80% of those awaiting execution are convicted of drug-related offences. They have not, however, provided an exact number.

It is especially harrowing that there is no end in sight for this theatre of cruelty with Iran’s gallows awaiting thousands more death row prisoners.   

 

The surge in executions reveals just how out of step Iran is with the rest of the world when it comes to the use of the death penalty - 140 countries worldwide have now rejected its use in law or practice. Already this year three more countries have repealed the death penalty completely. 

Executions in Iran did not even stop during the holy month of Ramadan. In a departure from established practice, at least four people were executed during Ramadan in 2016. 

  

While Amnesty International opposes the use of the death penalty unconditionally and in all cases, death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality. They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation.

The Iranian authorities should be ashamed of executing hundreds of people with complete disregard for the basic safeguards of due process. 

The use of the death penalty is always abhorrent, but it raises additional concerns in a country like Iran where trials are blatantly unfair.

Iranians are the victims of a state of hunger, poverty and misery, hurled down into the hollows of perdition by force and without their will.

Prisoners in Iran are often left languishing on death row, wondering each day if it will be their last. In many cases they are notified of their execution only a few hours beforehand and in some cases, families learn about the fate of their loved ones days, if not weeks, later.

As of 15 July 2015, the Iranian authorities had officially acknowledged 246 executions this year but Amnesty International has received credible reports of a further 448 executions carried out in this time period.

It is time the world unites to put to an end this travesty of justice and do everything in its power to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.