The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) on Monday reported that Iran has carried out at least 354 executions so far in 2023, including six women and five protesters.
206 of those killed were for drug-related offenses, a 126% rise compared with the first six months of 2022, and 20% of those executed were from Iran’s eastern Baluch minority, which makes up just 2-6% of Iran’s population.
Other prominent executions include British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, Iran’s former deputy defense minister, who was killed in January after being convicted of espionage, a charge he denied.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of IHRNGO, said in a statement that the killing of minorities and drug defendants is a tool of the regime to suppress political dissent.
“The death penalty is used to create societal fear and prevent more protests,” Amiry-Moghaddam said. “The majority of those killed are low-cost victims of the killing machine, drug defendants who are from the most marginalised communities. We especially call on the [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] and Member States funding joint projects with Iran, to break their meaningful silence on the execution of more than 206 people for drug offences, and to make all collaborations contingent on halting drug executions.”
IHRNGO noted that only 12% of the executions they recorded were officially reported in Iranian media and that the real total number of executions is likely much higher.
If the pace of executions in Iran continues, 2023 will see the largest number of death sentences carried out in Iran since 2015, when Iran executed 972 people. Iran typically carries out more death sentences than any country in the world except China.
The executions come as Iran continues to crack down on ongoing protests in the wake of the killing of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in regime custody after being arrested by Iran’s Morality Police for allegedly failing to wear her hijab in the legally-required manner. Her death in September 2022 sparked mass protests known as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement named after a popular protest slogan.
While protests have fallen off sharply since their peak in the autumn of 2022, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which tracks protests in Iran, recorded some 181 protests throughout Iran in June, including in the capital Tehran. According to FDD’s statistics, Iran has arrested more than 21,000 protesters and killed 630 since Amini’s death.
(c) The Algemeiner Journal
Israel will be condemned at the UN for this.
We must shell out an additional $30 million dollars of US taxpayers money and hand it over to the Iranian Mullahs. That’ll teach Trump a lesson.