Executions in Iran keep rising at an alarming rate, rights groups say

Iran executed at least 354 people in the first six months of 2023, said Iran Human Rights,  according to Voice of America.

The human rights group added that such figure is up 36% compared to the same period in 2022, when 261 people had been  executed.

However, at the end of 2022, at least 582 people had been executed, a 75% increase compared to 2021, according to a report released by Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty organizations.

The two rights groups have said the increase is Tehran’s way of trying to frighten protesters and prevent dissent, following a nationwide uprising sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 16, 2022, killed by the morality police for wearing her headscarf the wrong way.

Now, a few days away from the 1st anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s killing, Iranian authorities are arresting activists and pressuring citizens not to resume antigovernment protests, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Iran’s authorities demonstrated how crucial the death penalty is to instill societal fear in order to hold onto power,” Iran Human Rights said on their 2022 report.

“Protesters have been prosecuted in show trials at the Revolutionary Courts following systematic torture to force confessions. Proceedings were characterised by denial of access to lawyers, lack of due process and violations of the right to a fair trial,” reads the report.

Such was the case of Majidreza Rahnavard, a 23-year-old man who was hung from a crane, in a public killing less than a month after he was arrested and following a secretive trial, several media reported.

Photo: Twitter @ksadjadpour

Rahnavard was sentenced to death by a court in the city of Mashhad, a centre of the protests, for allegedly killing two members of the paramilitary Basij force, affiliated with the country’s feared Revolutionary Guards.

Rahnavard was not allowed to choose his own lawyer, challenge the evidence against him or ask for the trial to be held in public.

Iranian activist network 1500tasvir said Rahnavard’s mother was allowed to visit him the night before he was hanged but wasn’t aware of his imminent execution.

Photo: X @1500tasvir_en

But since Rahnavard, three other men have been executed in relation to anti-government protests and dozens more have received death sentences, CNN reported.

The director of Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said then that the public execution of a young man so soon after his arrest indicated “a significant escalation of the level of violence against protesters”.

“Rahnavard was sentenced to death based on coerced confessions, after a grossly unfair process and a show trial,” Amiry-Moghaddam told The Guardian.

He warned then that there was “a serious risk of mass execution of protesters,” and he was right.

Iran is believed to execute more people annually than any other country except China, NGOs and Human Rights activists have said.

More than 19,600 people have been arrested during the protests, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that's been tracking the crackdown.

European Union foreign ministers imposed sanctions on Iran on December 12, 2022, over the “widespread, brutal and disproportionate” crackdown on anti-government protests, Brussels said.

Twenty individuals were sanctioned, having their assets frozen and banned from EU travel over human rights abuses, several media reported.

However, the sanctions are seen as having little impact by Iranian activists, who have called for Europe to begin expelling Iranian diplomats.

Germany did so in February, when authorities ordered two Iranian embassy staff members to leave the country after an Iranian-German national was abducted abroad and forcibly returned to Iran for a “show trial” that resulted in a death penalty verdict, France 24 reported.

Activists have also put pressure on companies providing cranes to Iran to halt sales, warning they can be used for executions.

According to human rights groups estimations, in the period of 1980 to 1985, when the Islamic regime was established, between 25,000 to 40,000 Iranians were arrested, 15,000 were tried and 8,000 to 9,500 were executed.

Since the anti regime protests erupted in 2022, more that 600 people have been executed and more than 500 have been killed as authorities violently suppressed anti-regime demonstrations, including dozens of teenagers and children, according to Amnesty International.