The Islamic Republic authorities in Iran are going on an execution binge, using the spiraling instability and conflicts in the Middle East — in which they are complicit — as a smokescreen for their crimes against the Iranian people.
On January 22, the mother of
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Despite this, his execution took place a day after his mother’s appeal, with only a 12-hour notice to his lawyer because Iran’s Chief Justice vetoed the retrial and made sure Ghobadlou was secretly sentenced to death. This is not the first nor the last execution carried out in Iran in flagrant violation of the Islamic Republic’s international human rights obligations, and with utter contempt for the rule of law. He is at least the ninth protester to be executed in connection to the 2022 protests. Farhad Salimi, an Iranian Kurdish political prisoner subjected to torture-tainted “confession” and whose decade-long pleas for a fair retrial were ignored, was arbitrarily executed on the same day as Ghobadlou. Less than a week after their execution, four more Kurdish dissidents who were forcibly disappeared in July 2022 — Pejman Fatehi, Mohsan Mazloum, Mohammad Hazhir Faramarzi and Wafa Azarbar — were
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These dissidents, like the thousands of political prisoners put to death by Iran in the past four-and-a-half decades, were killed in order to spread fear among an increasingly restless and defiant population. The more than
There are limits to what activists inside Iran can do to stop the regime’s execution machine. After Ghobadlou’s execution, 61 women political prisoners in Evin Prison, including the anti-death penalty activist and 2023
The world must show the Islamic Republic authorities that deliberately and slowly breaking the necks of 806 individuals–hanging is the official manner of execution–in one year is simply intolerable, and neither “business as usual,” or diplomatic relations and engagement can continue. Iranians who are risking their very lives to
Global lawmakers should publicly support the political prisoners who are on hunger strike behind their prison walls to stop executions in Iran. This must demand an immediate moratorium on the death penalty, and call for the mandate of the UN Fact Finding Mission to Iran
As the Iranian people continue to risk everything to stand for their most fundamental rights in defiance of their unrepresentative and incorrigible authorities, the United Nations and its member states have a moral obligation to prevent their human rights mechanisms from being undermined and manipulated by the Islamic Republic, to legitimize itself on the world stage and continue its atrocities unrestrained.