Iran in 2019: 280 executions and hundreds of people 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 death predetermined by a court order and the signature of a judge, which, according to human rights defenders, should be replaced with other sentences.

In the case of Iran, which has one of the highest execution rates in the world, this issue is always at the forefront of global criticism and the focus of human rights defenders.

In its 12th annual report, the Iranian Human Rights Organization announced that Iran, with 280 executions in 2019, still had one of the highest figures in the world. According to the report, 70 percent of these executions were not announced by Iranian officials, and the Iranian 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 execution of retribution sentences, executions for which Iranian authorities often disclaim responsibility and, citing the Islamic Penal Code, attribute them to the guardians of the deceased.

But the Iranian Human Rights Organization says that, based on international law, the decision about the fate of these judicial cases and the murderer should be the responsibility of the judicial system, not the duty of the victim's family.

At the same time, the Iranian Human Rights Organization welcomed the increase in cases of forgiveness instead of retribution in Iran, saying that in 2019, at least 374 people sentenced to retribution were forgiven by the victim's family, which is a promising figure compared to the 255 people who were executed by retribution.

The Iranian Human Rights Organization has also criticized what it calls the lack of transparency by the Islamic Republic's authorities in announcing the exact number of executions, saying that in many cases, death sentences are carried out secretly in prisons without the knowledge of the accused's lawyer, in a non-transparent and unfair trial process. This is an issue that Amnesty International has also criticized many times.

The execution of child criminals is also one of the cases that has always been strongly criticized by the United Nations and human rights defenders. People who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime and the use of the death penalty for them violates the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention to which Iran has also joined since 1993.

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

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

The 13 public executions in 2019 are among the other cases documented by the Iranian Human Rights Organization. The organization says that carrying out death sentences in public violates human rights standards and is inconsistent with Iran's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In another part of its report, the Iranian Human Rights Organization discusses the numerous political executions of 2018. Executions whose black box has not been opened after more than 30 years and about which there are many questions, from the exact number of those executed that year to the burial places of dozens of these people, some of whom were serving their prison sentences and did not have death sentences in their files.

A year ago, Amnesty International, in a report titled "Blood-Drenched Secrets," called on the United Nations to conduct a comprehensive and independent investigation into the extent of these executions.

Iran has had the highest number of executions in the world for years, after China. In 2018, Iran was responsible for a third of all executions in the world, with 253 executions.

The number of executions in China is unknown because the government classifies execution statistics as state secrets.

However, human rights defenders are optimistic about the overall decrease in the number of executions in the world, saying that the downward trend in the number of executions in the world shows that in recent years, many countries have realized that the death penalty is not a solution to reducing crime.

The Iranian Human Rights Organization continued its report by discussing the November 2019 protests and criticized the bloody suppression of these protests, during which hundreds of people were killed in the streets by government agents.

Various statistics have been published on the number of people killed in November 2019, ranging from 324 according to the Iranian Human Rights Organization to 1,500 according to Reuters. However, the authorities of the Islamic Republic have so far refused to provide statistics on the number of people killed and arrested in these bloody protests.

The Iranian Human Rights Organization continues to make recommendations to the authorities of the Islamic Republic 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 the recommendations contained therein.

Source: Radio Farda