Trump Administration Should Hold Iran Accountable for Executions
Highlighting the ongoing violations of Human Rights in Iran, Dr.
Ali Safavi a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran and president of the Near East Policy Research wrote an
article in ‘The Hill’ on December 30, the following is the full text:
Nearly a year after the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the ensuing fanfare regarding the possibility of an age of reform within a feeble theocracy, Tehran’s behavior has taken a turn for the worse. The most tangible evidence of this can be seen in its treatment of the Iranian people.
Nearly a year after the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the ensuing fanfare regarding the possibility of an age of reform within a feeble theocracy, Tehran’s behavior has taken a turn for the worse. The most tangible evidence of this can be seen in its treatment of the Iranian people.
By
any measure, the human rights situation in Iran has dramatically deteriorated.
Indeed, in December 2016, the United Nations condemned Iran’s abuses for the
63rd time.
This
should encourage the new U.S. administration to take on a much more vocal and
active role regarding the regime’s unbridled rights violations, including the
placement of the dossier on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda.
Consider
the facts. The Iranian regime has stepped up executions dramatically in recent
years. Amnesty International has called it a “staggering execution spree” while
underscoring that Iran has the highest number of executions per capita in the
world.
Over
2,700 executions have been carried out since Hassan Rouhani took office in
2013, the most in the past 25 years. Victims include political dissidents like
Gholamreza Khosravi, an activist of Iran’s principal opposition, the
Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), who was hanged in 2014 simply for providing
financial assistance to a satellite television station.
On
Dec. 19, the U.N. General Assembly expressed "serious concern at the
alarmingly high frequency of the imposition and carrying-out of the death
penalty by the (Iranian regime)… including executions undertaken for crimes
that do not qualify as the most serious crimes, on the basis of forced
confessions or against minors and persons who at the time of their offence were
under the age of 18.”
The
U.N. censure resolution also called on the Iranian regime “to ensure, in law and
in practice, that no one is subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment.”
“Iran
has the shameful status of being the world’s last official executioner of child
offenders,” Amnesty International stated.
“Execution
of two juvenile offenders in just a few days makes a mockery of Iran’s juvenile
justice system,” AI announced on Oct. 14, 2015.
Imprisoned
activists are routinely subjected to torture and ill treatment by the regime.
Many female activists are deprived of medical treatment as a form of
psychological and physical torture.
Maryam
Akbari Monfared, for example, is one of the prominent prisoners who is
suffering from serious illnesses in the Iranian regime's jails, but is
deliberately deprived of treatment. She called for an investigation into the
killing of thousands of prisoners in 1988.
Women
are treated worse than second-class citizens. Since 2014, the Majlis
(parliament) has adopted four legislations further limiting women’s rights,
restricting access to employment and education.
According
to Reporters without Borders, Iran is still one of the world’s most oppressive
countries with respect to freedom of information.
moderate,
“the overall situation has worsened” with regard to human rights in Iran.
Most
shockingly, in August, an audio tape was released which gave more clues about a
large-scale massacre that killed as many as 30,000 political prisoners in Iran.
In
the audio tape, the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, at the time slated to
become the next supreme leader, tells a group of senior judicial and
intelligence officials, “In my opinion, the greatest crime committed during the
Islamic Republic, for which history will condemn us, has been committed by
you.”
Among
the executed were pregnant women and girls as young as 15, as underscored by
Montazeri.
According
to the Washington Post, “Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of
Resistance of Iran opposition group, urged international prosecutors to use the
tape as further evidence that can be used to press charges for the political
slayings of the late 1980s.”
One
of the officials involved in the 1988 massacre was Mostafa Pourmohammadi, now,
paradoxically, Rouhani’s justice minister…
Explain:
The mullahs' regime in Iran main cause of
instability in the Middle East, world, the massacre of the Syrian people and the
godfather International terrorism
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