Report on human rights violations in Iran; At least 267 people executed in 2020

The Iranian Human Rights Organization, which monitors and analyzes the human rights situation in Iran, announced in its 13th annual report on executions and statistics in the country that at least 267 people were executed in Iran in 2020.

The report, which was prepared and published with the support of Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), emphasizes that last year, Iran was "the only country that continued to execute child criminals" and that at least "four child criminals" were among those executed.

The Iranian judiciary executed 273 and 280 people in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and in 2020, the number of executions in Iran decreased slightly.

Meanwhile, only one person was executed in public last year, which according to the report was "the lowest number in the last 15 years," but according to officials from the Human Rights Organization in Iran, this does not necessarily indicate a change in the policy of the judiciary and was likely due to "restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic."

Over the past months, there has been widespread public criticism of the execution, and numerous campaigns have been active on social media opposing the execution.

The Human Rights Organization has also published the results of a survey conducted by the organization, according to which 70 percent of respondents opposed the "death penalty" and 85 percent of respondents opposed "public executions and the death penalty for those who were under 18 years of age at the time of the crime."

Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam, director of the Iranian Human Rights Organization, referring to the increase in anti-execution campaigns on social media, said that the Iranian government uses executions as a tool to "instill fear among the people in order to maintain power," but the trend of public protests has shown that they do not "feel fear" and that such an approach has "aroused their anger toward executions."

In addition, the number of pardons of death row prisoners in 2020 also "increased significantly," increasing from "374 cases" in 2019 to "662 cases" in 2020.

In another part of the report, the Iranian Human Rights Organization, referring to the issuance of death sentences to political and civil activists, wrote that in 2020, "the number of executions in the ethnic regions of Sistan and Baluchestan and Kurdistan has increased significantly compared to the previous two years."

According to the report, the growing trend of executions in these regions continues in 2021, and "in the first month and a half of this year, Baloch prisoners accounted for one-third of all executions."

Amnesty International had previously reported that 19 Baloch citizens were executed in Iran from December 19 to February 17 of last year.

Rafael Schnoel-Hazan, director of Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM), expressed "deep concern" about the high rate of executions in these regions and called on the international community to pay attention to this issue.

Among political and civil activists, the execution of Mustafa Salehi and Navid Afkari, who had participated in nationwide protests against government policies, and the execution of Ruhollah Zam, who was kidnapped in Iraq and taken to Iran, were three notable cases in 2020.

The Iranian Human Rights Organization has emphasized that these cases, which have been widely condemned by international human rights organizations, "reveal a gross violation of the fair trial process in Iran."

Another part of the report refers to the execution of a man in July 2020 "for repeated drinking of alcoholic beverages," and emphasizes that "in the past three decades, there have been no documented or announced executions on charges of alcohol consumption," and this was the first execution for multiple drinking.

According to Article 136 of the Islamic Penal Code, "If someone commits a type of crime that results in a hadd sentence three times, and each time the hadd sentence for that crime is imposed on him, his hadd sentence on the fourth occasion is death."

According to reports from international organizations, Iran, along with China, has the worst situation among countries in the world in terms of per capita population and execution rate.

Source: Radio Farda