Human Rights Report: At Least 267 People Executed in Iran in 2020

The Iran Human Rights Organization, which monitors and analyzes the human rights situation in Iran, announced in its thirteenth annual report on executions and execution statistics in the country that at least 267 people were executed in Iran in 2020.

In this report, which was prepared and published with the support of the “Together Against the Death Penalty” (ECPM) organization, it was emphasized that in the past year, Iran was “the only country that continued to execute child offenders,” with at least “four child offenders” among those executed.

Iran’s judicial system executed 273 and 280 people in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and in 2020, the execution rate in Iran showed a slight decrease.

Meanwhile, only one person was executed in public last year, which according to this report was “the lowest rate in the past 15 years.” However, according to officials at the Iran Human Rights Organization, this does not necessarily indicate a change in the judicial branch’s policy and was likely due to “restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In recent months, widespread criticism had been raised about public executions. Additionally, multiple campaigns against the implementation of death sentences were active on social media networks.

The Human Rights Organization also released results of a survey it conducted, according to which 70 percent of respondents opposed the “death penalty” and 85 percent of respondents opposed “public executions and capital punishment for those who were under 18 years old at the time of committing the crime.”

Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Iran Human Rights Organization, referring to the increased activity of anti-execution campaigns on social media, said that the Iranian government uses executions as a tool of “intimidation among the people to maintain power,” but the process of people’s protests has shown that they “do not feel fear” and such an approach “has provoked their anger toward executions.”

Furthermore, the rate of pardons for death-sentenced individuals in 2020 showed a “significant increase,” rising from “374 cases” in 2019 to “662 cases” in 2020.

In another section of the report, the Iran Human Rights Organization, referring to death sentences issued for political and civil activists, wrote that in 2020, “the number of executions in the ethnic regions of Sistan and Baluchestan and Kurdistan showed a significant increase compared to the previous two years.”

According to the report, the upward trend of executions in these regions continued in 2021, and “in the first month and a half of this year, Baluch prisoners made up one-third of all executions.”

Amnesty International had previously reported that from December 20 to February 6 of last year, 19 Baluch citizens were executed in Iran.

Raphaël Chenuil-Hazan, director of the “Together Against the Death Penalty” (ECPM) organization, expressing “severe concern” about this trend and the high rate of executions in these regions, called for international community attention to this issue.

Among political and civil activists, the sentencing of Mostafa Salahi and Navid Afkari, who participated in nationwide protests against government policies, and the execution of Rouhollah Zam, who was abducted in Iraq and brought to Iran, were three prominent cases of 2020.

The Iran Human Rights Organization emphasized that these cases, which faced widespread condemnation from international human rights bodies, “demonstrate a gross violation of fair trial procedures in Iran.”

In another section of the report, it referred to the execution of a man in July 2020 “for repeated consumption of alcoholic beverages,” emphasizing that “in the past three decades there has been no documented or announced execution with the charge of alcohol consumption,” and this was the first case of execution for multiple instances of drinking alcohol.

According to Article 136 of the Islamic Penal Code, “If someone commits the same type of crime subject to a hadd punishment three times and the hadd punishment is carried out each time, the punishment in the fourth instance is execution.”

According to reports from international bodies, Iran, in proportion to per capita population and execution rates, along with China, has the worst situation among countries in the world.

Source: Radio Farda