Executions, Arrests, Attacks on Women, Abuse of Political Prisoners All Soaring – World Must Respond to the Islamic Republic’s Escalating Crimes Against Its Own People
As regional hostilities continue to build, the Islamic Republic is using the cover of these growing tensions to go after its domestic critics. The government’s intensifying campaign of repression has targeted growing numbers of activists, protesters, and political prisoners, with arrests and executions soaring, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) warned today.
“We’ve seen this playbook before—the Islamic Republic uses the threat of war to strike out at its domestic critics, and the results over the years have been thousands of civilians, political opponents, and prisoners killed by the regime,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI)
“Activists, protesters, political prisoners, women refusing the hijab, minority communities, and many others are in increasing danger as the authorities in Iran move to crush domestic dissent by any means, be it through imprisonment, gunning people down in the street, or hanging them,” said Ghaemi.
CHRI calls on the international community to move into a heightened state of alert regarding the fast deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, especially the soaring executions, and respond to their continuation with severe and coordinated diplomatic and economic consequences.
The Islamic Republic’s escalating atrocities include:
Surging executions: Over 300 people were executed in the first seven months of 2024, including at least 15 women. Executions are carried out without due process and convictions are routinely based on “confessions” extracted under torture.
Political executions: Since the 2023-2023 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, executions are now being used to target protesters and other critics of the state. At least 13 political prisoners were executed in 2024; 12 were members of minority communities.
Abuse of prisoners: Prison authorities in Iran are violently abusing and denying critical medical care to prisoners, especially women political prisoners who continue to speak out against the surging executions.
Escalating attacks against women refusing hijab: Security forces have intensified their violent enforcement of forced hijab by subjecting women and girls to beatings, sexual violence, and arbitrary arrests and detentions.
Escalating attacks against women activists: At least 12 women activists have been sentenced to prison terms after sham trials, some as long as 21 years; some were tortured and at least two were charged with crimes that can carry the death penalty.
Minorities, especially Kurds and Baluchis, continue to be disproportionally executed, imprisoned, or gunned down in the streets for protesting. A recent UN report noted 72 of 93 Baha’is summoned to court or prison without lawful cause since March were women.
Imprisonment of labor leaders: Dozens of labor activists have been summoned, arrested, imprisoned, and denied medical care behind bars in the last few months, and a labor activist and mother of a young son was recently sentenced to death.
Targeting of cultural figures: 39 artists, 36 of whom, are women, have reportedly been summoned, threatened, and, in some cases, arrested across the provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, Ardabil, and Fairs just in July.
Massacres of the 1980s Set the Pattern Still Seen Today
There is a long history of the Islamic Republic using extreme violence against its own populations in times of war or domestic unrest.
In 1981-82, as the Islamic Republic sought to consolidate clerical power and fend off the attack by Iraq that led to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the new clerical regime killed thousands of political opponents.
In 1988, as the Iran-Iraq war inched toward a bitter ceasefire, Islamic Republic authorities ordered the mass hangings of approximately 5000 political prisoners after inquisition-like sessions to “test” their allegiance to the clerical regime, all of whom had already been sentenced and were serving their terms, and dumped their bodies in mass unmarked graves.
In the popular domestic unrest that has marked the last seven years—in 2017, again in 2019, and most recently, in the 2022-2023 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that surged across the country, state security forces shot dead in the streets hundreds of unarmed civilians, over 500 in just the 2022 protests alone.
Outcry by People of Iran Against Government’s Human Rights Atrocities
There are many voices in Iran speaking out against these crimes, including women political prisoners, who at great personal risk, have been protesting these executions from behind their bars, going on hunger strikes, and staging sit-ins. In at least 18 prisons across Iran, a “No Execution Tuesdays” campaign has been held every Tuesday since January 2024, in which prisoners have been holding weekly hunger strikes to protest the surging executions.
“The Islamic Republic still holds the power and the guns, but after the atrocities and crimes against humanity it is committing against its own people, it no longer has any legitimacy,” said Ghaemi.
“As the people of Iran struggle to defend their basic human rights and face down a violent and repressive government, the international community must stand with them, in actions, not just words, and demonstrate that these atrocities bring severe diplomatic and economic costs.”
Second publication by courtesy of Iran Human Rights
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