Iran’s ‘execution machine’ amid anti-hijab protests? 75% spike in hangings
Iran executed 75 per cent more people in 2022 than the previous years, two rights groups said, denouncing an “execution machine” aimed at spreading fear amid massive protests.
That shook the country last year. At least 582 executions took place in Iran, well above the figure of 333 in 2021, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and Paris-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said.
Massive protests erupted in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who died in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women- not wearing her hijab properly. The protests faced crackdown that saw four men hanged in cases and executions which prompted an international outcry.
IHR director Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam said that the international reaction has kept protest-related executions in check but Iran is still using executions on other charges to intimidate protestors.
“The international reactions to the death sentences against protesters have made it difficult for the Islamic Republic to proceed with their executions. To compensate, and in order to spread fear among people, the authorities have intensified the execution for non-political charges. These are the low-cost victims of the Islamic Republic’s execution machine,” he said.
More than half of the executions were after the start of the protests, and 44 percent of the 582 executions recorded in 2022 were on drug-related charges, the report noted.
“The death penalty is part of the systematic discrimination and extensive repression ethnic minorities of Iran are subjected to,” it said.
The report said that one hundred more protesters still risked execution after being sentenced to death. It also expressed alarm over the spike in the number of drug-related executions.
“Lack of reaction by the UNODC and donor countries to the reversal of these reforms (of 2017) sends the wrong signal to the Iranian authorities,” ECPM director Raphael Chenuil-Hazan said.