World Day Against the Death Penalty; Children, Hidden Victims

Children, hidden victims; is an issue that human rights organizations decided to dedicate this year to October 10, the World Day Against the Death Penalty, to the small victims who are often forgotten.

It doesn't matter what crime they were executed for, murder, drug trafficking, war, or espionage; a child has lost a parent, due to what human rights organizations call state-sponsored murder, the death penalty! A punishment that deprives hundreds of children around the world every year of having a parent. Hundreds of children like Omid.

Omid was a young child when his father was executed:

"My father visited me in prison several times, but I don't have any pictures of him. As a child, you wonder where your father is. Talking about what happened to my father wasn't a common topic of conversation, and until I was 14 or 15, it was common knowledge that my father lived abroad. I knew it all along, there was a picture of him on the wall, and I knew he wasn't there for some reason. When I was in school, I would lie when asked who my father was and where he was. But then I would see that other children in the family who had fathers had different lifestyles than me. I always felt that void."

The loss of a parent is a bitter feeling that hundreds of children in 20 countries around the world faced last year, led by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and Iraq, respectively; 20 countries that implemented the death penalty in 2018, leaving children forever grieving for their father or mother.

Children like Rabia, who finds the effects of her father's execution indescribable:

"I couldn't cry at all, nothing! My relationship with my father was very close. The impact of his execution was very big. It still has an impact on me, I still wait for my father to call me once, I still have my father's face in front of my eyes. I don't know how to describe how much his execution had a negative impact on me."

According to Amnesty International, last year, about 20,000 people around the world faced the death penalty, which means anxiety and worry for thousands of children who awaited the death of their parents, a bitter wait for a predetermined death, on a specific day and time, in a heavy and painful atmosphere.

Tara was 13 years old when she said goodbye to her father forever. She says:

"I really don't know what people can say in this situation? What does this goodbye mean? What are you going to tell your father? I remember how I felt at that time very well and I don't think I'll ever forget how angry I was. For years, long years, I really didn't feel anything, it was like I was dead. So much of me was lost, that's what happened, it's all black."

The dark memory that executing countries around the world create for the children of executed people.

Mahmoud Amirimoghadam, head of the Iranian Human Rights Organization, says in Oslo:

"We condemn executions every day, but even human rights organizations rarely address the effects of executions on the children of executed people, the ignored victims of the death penalty; this year marks the 30th anniversary of the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and we thought we could draw public attention to the violation of the rights of children of people sentenced to death or executed."

Paying attention to the little victims whose rights are violated according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children who, in their happy world, perhaps do not yet have a proper understanding of the concept of death, are deprived of having their father or mother.

Hassan Nayeb Hashem, a human rights activist in Vienna, speaks of the violation of children's rights in this incident:

"When a country carries out executions, that is, it actually carries out intentional murder, it deprives these children of the possibility of being cared for by their parents for the rest of their lives. So it's not just the executed person who is harmed, their spouse and children are also seriously harmed for the rest of their lives."

The harm that begins with the arrest of the parent continues until the trial and issuance of the death sentence, culminating in its execution.

Reza Kazemzadeh, a clinical psychologist in Brussels, believes that the execution of parents has a multifaceted impact on children's lives:

"Since the child is not fully capable of understanding the acts of such terrible and irreversible violence, in most cases he experiences this event as a psychological shock. That is, his encounter with this issue is accompanied by a feeling of instability in life. He feels that he has lost the safe environment that every child needs. In many cases, it has also been seen that drug use or delinquency has increased in the children of executed people. In addition, the execution of a person is always accompanied by a feeling of social defeat for a child, meaning that the death sentence for the child is a kind of social stigma that is forever stamped on his forehead and that of his family, and this is irreparable."

This year, October 8, the World Day against the Death Penalty, has come at a time when 142 countries around the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice, but Iran was responsible for one-third of all executions in the world last year, with at least 253 executions, not including China.

Mahmoud Amiri Moghadam says about the number of executions this year:

"According to statistics from the Iranian Human Rights Organization, at least 210 people have been executed in Iran since the beginning of this year. Most of these people were convicted of murder, and among those executed were at least two child criminals. Unfortunately, Iran is still one of the largest executioner countries in the world."

One of the world's largest executioner countries, which executed Omid's father for political reasons years ago.

Omid says he wishes his father were there to ask him and recognize him:

"I always had questions that I wanted to ask my father and know what was on his mind. What I know about him is what I heard from my grandparents and my mother, for example, I know my father was a good painter but I wish he had been and I saw all this. Sometimes I was angry why my father didn't make me a priority in his life and chose the political path, but at the same time it's easy to criticize and question someone when they're not there. Maybe my father had his reasons but I don't have the opportunity to hear them in his own words."

An opportunity that has been taken away from hundreds or thousands of other children in Iran over the past four decades. A process that continues, depriving dozens of other children, dozens of other Rabias, Taras, and Omids, of having a father or mother every year.