by Atousa Pilger
According to Iran Human Rights Monitor (IRAN HRM), since January 2019, 176 people have been executed in Iran. The highest number of execution have been in July and August.
The regime has stepped up executions, including of women. There have been reports on human rights activists who got imprisoned or brutalized in prison during the month of July.
At least 39 people, including four women and two juveniles at the time of their arrest, were executed in July. On Sunday, August 25, 2019 the state-run ROKNA news agency reported the execution of a women in the Central Prison of Mashhad. This is the 94th woman executed in Iran during Hassan Rouhani’s tenure as president since 2013. What’s noteworthy is that many western politicians consider Rouhani as a “moderate” figure in the Iranian regime.
On August 29, Iran carried out a collective execution of 8 inmates in Raja’i Shahr Prison in the city of Karaj, near the capital, Tehran.
Some 3,700 persons have been executed in Iran in the past six years under Rouhani. According to international organizations, the Iranian regime holds the record of execution per capita. It employs the death penalty as a tool for maintaining its grab on power and for silencing a disgruntled populace, the majority of whom live under the poverty line, while unemployment is rampant in the country and there is no freedom of speech.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman said in a report circulated to the UN General Assembly August 16, last year saw continuing violations of the right to life, liberty and fair trial in the Islamic Republic, including 253 reported executions of adults and children.
Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman said the number of executions in Iran “remains one of the highest in the world.”
In this regard, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, has repeatedly called on international human rights bodies to send an international investigation delegation to visit prisons in Iran and meet political prisoners.
In a message to a conference titled “Iran: Massacred Human Rights: 31st anniversary of the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988,” which was held on Friday, 30th of August in City Hall of first arrondissement of Paris she said: “The international community’s failure to hold the regime accountable for its malign actions, including the 1988 Massacre,” where 30.000 political prisoners, who were members and supporters of the PMOI/MEK were executed. She argued that “this policy of appeasement places the entire world at risk.”
