Iran has witnessed a dramatic increase in executions so far in 2011, United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay said on Wednesday and her office said the rate was three times that of last year. Expressing alarm at the rise, she said at least 66 people, including three known to be political dissidents, were executed in January. Pillay aides said they had recorded about 300 executions for the whole of last year.
“We have urged Iran, time and time again, to halt executions,” said Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in a statement issued through the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, where she is based. “I am very dismayed that instead of heeding our calls, the Iranian authorities appear to have stepped up the use of the death penalty.”
Her spokesman, Rupert Colville, said tracking of official Iranian reports and the country’s media showed that last year the figure was running at about 18 to 25 a month. “So this year it is triple that rate,” he told Reuters.
Pillay, a former South African high court judge, said she was deeply concerned at the large number of people reported to be under sentence of death who included political prisoners, drug offenders and even juveniles.
“Dissent is not a crime,” she said. “It is absolutely unacceptable for individuals to be imprisoned for association with opposition groups, let alone be executed for their political views or affiliations. At a minimum, I call upon them (the Iranian authorities) to respect international standards guaranteeing due process and the protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty, to progressively restrict its use and reduce the number of offences for which it may be imposed.”
Also a former judge at the International Criminal Court, she is often accused by critics of the United Nations, especially in the United States, of not taking a strong enough position on abuses in countries such as Iran, Sudan and China.
Many Western diplomats, whose countries Pillay has sometimes criticised, say she has been as effective as she can be in a post which has no enforcement mechanism and where she has to work with an uncooperative U.N. Human Rights Council.
In the 47-country council, Iran and many other developing countries accused of abuse by rights activists are shielded from criticism by a majority alliance of Islamic and African countries usually backed by Russia, China and Cuba.
source: Reuters
Two opposition leaders in Iran want a halt to “unrestrained” executions which, they say, are spreading fear among Iranians and isoloating the country internationally, a website reported Wednesday.
“As citizens of this noble Iranian nation, we urge that these unrestrained and illogical executions be halted,” Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were quoted as saying by Sahamnews.org, which belongs to Karroubi.
Iran has hanged 67 people so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on media reports. The foreign ministry says that 80 percent of those executed were drug smugglers. Karroubi and Mousavi, who oppose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, said the executions have only managed to “spread fear” among the people and “forced further isolation of Iran in the international community.”
Given the current rate of about two executions per day since January 1, the number of hangings in Iran is set to exceed the 179 reportedly executed in 2010.
Mousavi and Karroubi said that nearly 300 people were hanged in 2010 and that some had been executed before the conclusion of judicial proceedings.
“Regardless of charges and whether they are true or false, it is a legal and religious right of every human being that his judicial and legal process be completed,” they said, adding that such executions were “un-Islamic.”
Iran says it exercises the death penalty to establish law and order and that executions are carried out only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.
The surge in executions this year has generated criticism in the West, especially after Iran hanged an Iranian-Dutch woman on drug-related charges after she was originally arrested for joining an anti-government protest.
The Netherlands has frozen diplomatic ties with Iran over the hanging of Zahra Bahrami on Saturday, but the Iranian government said it regarded her as an Iranian as the Islamic Republic does not recognise dual nationality.
source: AFP
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