Iran in 2019: 280 Executions and Hundreds Killed in the Streets

Execution is a violation of the right to life, a violation of the most fundamental right of every human being—a predetermined death by court ruling and a judge’s signature that, according to human rights defenders, should be replaced with other sentences.

In the case of Iran, which has one of the highest execution statistics in the world, this issue has always been at the forefront of international criticism and the attention of human rights defenders.

The Iran Human Rights Organization stated in its twelfth annual report that Iran, with 280 executions in 2019, still had one of the highest statistics in the world. According to this report, 70 percent of these executions were not announced by Iranian official authorities, and the Iran Human Rights Organization was able to confirm them through its own sources.

80 percent of all executions in Iran in 2019 were related to the implementation of death sentences, executions that Iranian authorities often disclaim responsibility for and, by referring to Islamic Penal Code, place in the hands of the victim’s heirs.

However, the Iran Human Rights Organization states that according to international law, the decision regarding the fate of these legal cases and the convicted murderer should be the responsibility of the judicial system, not the duty of the victim’s family.

Meanwhile, the Iran Human Rights Organization has welcomed the increase in cases of pardons instead of retaliatory executions in Iran and stated that in 2019, at least 374 individuals sentenced to death were pardoned by the victim’s family, which compared to the 255 people executed under death sentences is an encouraging figure.

The Iran Human Rights Organization has also criticized what it calls the lack of transparency by Islamic Republic authorities in announcing the exact number of executions, and states that in many cases death sentences are carried out without the knowledge of the defendant’s lawyer and secretly in prisons, and that too in a non-transparent and unjust legal process. A matter that Amnesty International has also repeatedly criticized.

The execution of child offenders is also a matter that has always been severely criticized by the United Nations and human rights defenders. Individuals who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime, and the use of capital punishment for them violates the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. A convention to which Iran has been a party since 1993.

According to the Iran Human Rights Organization report, at least four child offenders were executed in Iran last year.

Over the past two years, the number of executions related to drug crimes in Iran has decreased significantly, and the reason is the passage and implementation of a law in this regard, a law that came into effect in November 2017 and limits the use of capital punishment for these crimes. However, Mahmoud Amiri Moghaddam says that the number of executions related to drugs in Iran is still high compared to other countries in the world.

13 public executions in 2019 are among other cases that the Iran Human Rights Organization has documented. The organization states that carrying out death sentences in public violates human rights principles and is inconsistent with Iran’s commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The Iran Human Rights Organization, in another section of its report, addresses the numerous political executions of 1988. Executions that, after more than 30 years, remain a black box, with many unanswered questions about them—from the exact number of those executed that year to the burial sites of dozens of these individuals, some of whom were serving their prison sentences and did not have execution orders in their cases.

Amnesty International, a year ago, in a report titled “Blood-Soaked Secrets,” called on the United Nations to conduct comprehensive and independent investigations into the scale of these executions.

Iran has had the second highest execution rate in the world after China for years. In 2018, Iran was responsible for one-third of all executions worldwide with 253 executions.

The number of executions in China is unclear because the government of that country classifies execution statistics as a state secret.

Nevertheless, human rights defenders are optimistic about the overall decrease in executions worldwide and say that the downward trend in the number of executions globally shows that in recent years many countries have realized that capital punishment is not a solution for reducing crime.

The Iran Human Rights Organization, in the continuation of its report, also addresses the November 2019 protests and has criticized the bloody suppression of these protests. Protests during which hundreds of people were killed by bullets from government security forces in the streets.

Different figures have been released regarding the November 2019 death toll, ranging from 324 people according to the Iran Human Rights Organization to 1,500 people according to Reuters news agency, but the Islamic Republic authorities have so far been unwilling to provide any statistics on the number of deaths and arrests in these bloody protests.

The Iran Human Rights Organization continues with recommendations to the Islamic Republic authorities to improve the human rights situation in Iran and further reduce the number of executions.

Iranian authorities have not yet responded to this report and its recommendations.

Source: Radio Farda