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36 Carried out in the last 24 hours by hanging them, all have been marked as serious violations of international law
Global community must forcibly warn Iran to stop these illegal executions
August 7, 2024 – The Islamic Republic (Iran), already one of the world’s leading executioners, is significantly ramping up its execution of prisoners, in a deeply disturbing surge that has seen at least 36 individuals illegally executed in the past 24 hours.
Since Aug. 6, 29 men, including two Afghan citizens and a member of the Baluch minority, have reportedly been executed for murder, drug-related and rape charges in Karaj, Alborz province—26 in Qezel Hesar prison and three in the city’s central prison. In addition, one man was executed in Sabzevar, Khorasan Razavi province, three men were executed in Shiraz, Fars province, and three men were executed in Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan province. These are only the known executions; There are often additional executions that take place without public knowledge.
“These executions by the Islamic Republic are nothing less than state-sanctioned killings — and they are killings on an increasing mass scale,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
“The Islamic Republic shows a total disregard for life and the rule of law, and clearly draws the response from the international community,” Ghaemi said.
“All relevant UN bodies and governments worldwide must deny the Iranian authorities the idea that their heinous killings can take place without serious diplomatic and economic consequences – otherwise these hangings will only accelerate,” Ghaemi added.
CHRI calls for an immediate halt to all executions in Iran and the destruction of all existing death sentences, given the profound violations that characterize death penalty cases in Iran.
Executions in Iran violate numerous international laws and standards—they are carried out without any semblance of due process and for crimes that do not meet international thresholds for capital punishment, and the convictions are frequently based on “confessions” extracted under torture.
Since the 2023-2023 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests that swept Iran, executions are now increasingly being used to target protesters and other critics of the state in blatantly illegal and fabricated political persecutions.
Just yesterday, on August 6, Reza Rasaei, a 34-year-old who supported his elderly mother and family through beekeeping, and member of the Kurdish and Yaresan minority communities, was executed in connection with the 2022 protests, without giving prior notice to him, his family or his lawyer, Amnesty International reported.
Minorities are disproportionately targeted for the death penalty and execution in Iran, particularly the Kurdish and Baluchi minority communities.
There was a growing outcry in Iran against these increased executions, and they included a large group of female political prisoners, who, at great risk to themselves, protested these executions from behind their bars.
To protest the execution of Reza Rasaei, prisoners in Evin prison’s women’s section chanted “Death to the dictator” and “Death to the execution regime” as they broke the door of the guard office and clashed with the security guards who came to suppress the prisoners. Phone calls and visits to prisoners in the hall were cut off, Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi reported on August 7.
In an audio file published on the Instagram page of Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi on August 4, at least 37 female political prisoners can be heard chanting against the government and the executions during an overnight sit-down protest in Tehran’s Evin prison. For their protest, they were denied visitation rights.
The women’s protest at Evin was part of the “No Execution Tuesdays” campaign held every Tuesday since January 2024, in which prisoners in at least 18 prisons across Iran held weekly hunger strikes to protest executions in Iran.
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