Iran, the world's most prolific executioner after China, hanged 24 convicted drug traffickers on or near the day the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in before parliament for a second, four-year term last week. The timing of the two events was seemingly coincidental. Those sent to the gallows in this year's biggest mass execution were not arrested for protesting against the president's "stolen" election.
The widely condemned show trial of scores of reformist politicians, dissidents and demonstrators currently under way in Tehran has yet to reach the stage of convictions and sentencing. However, Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, said it has recorded an "alarming spike" in the number of executions since the elections. "In just over 50 days, we recorded no less than 115 executions, that is an average of more than two each day," Irene Khan, the Amnesty International secretary general, said in a statement on Friday. "Most are said to have been convicted of drug-smuggling or related offences."
Ms Khan's statement made no conclusions. But the accelerated rate of executions has raised suspicions that they are aimed at cowing the population at a time when the regime is facing its greatest challenge in 30 years and is keen to reassert its authority with speedy and decisive "justice". "A lot of these executions are a means for the state to prove its intimidation muscle and keep the population in check, [to demonstrate] that they are willing to go to any extent to hold on to power," said Hadi Ghaemi, the Iranian-born director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a New York and Netherlands-based non-governmental organisation.
Iran's handling of the post-election crisis and the surge in hangings has put Tehran in the human rights dock on two counts simultaneously. Several people protesting against the allegedly rigged election have died in detention while scores more are thought to have been killed by security forces during demonstrations. Meanwhile European nations lambasted Iran over the latest politically motivated mass trials at the weekend when Iranian workers at the British and French embassies were among dozens of detainees hauled before a Tehran court on what Britain called "unjustified charges" related to the post-election turmoil.
The world's attention in recent weeks has understandably been focused on the Tehran authorities' "brutal attempts to suppress the mass and largely peaceful protests", Amnesty International said. "Yet as these grotesque figures [of recent executions] show, there has been no let-up in other long-standing patterns of human rights abuse - in fact, the reverse". The human rights organisation said the 115 executions known to have been carried out by Iran since the June 12 elections included 14 on July 2; 20 on July 4; 14 on July 13 and "a further 24 executions on August 5, the day of the inauguration". This represented a "significant increase, even compared to the appallingly high rate of executions that has been so long a feature of the human rights scene in Iran".
In the period between the election and the beginning of the year, Amnesty International said it had recorded at least 196 executions in Iran. By its count, that would bring the total so far in 2009 to 311. With nearly five months of the year left, that is fast approaching the figure of at least 346 people Amnesty International says were put to death last year. Iran is second only to China in the number of executions it carries out, although its population is far smaller, making the Islamic Republic per capita the world's leading executioner. Iran last year executed eight juvenile offenders: the only country in the world known to have executed people convicted of crimes committed when they were minors, Amnesty International said.
The hanging of the 24 unidentified drug traffickers at a prison in Karaj, a town west of Tehran, was vociferously condemned by the Swedish presidency of the European Union, although it said the event took place on July 30, rather than August 5. Another 20 drug traffickers were hanged at the same prison in Karaj in early July. Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, drug trafficking, armed robbery, adultery, treason and espionage. The authorities say the death penalty is essential for maintaining public security and is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.
However, Amnesty International says that "typically, people accused of drug offences or other serious crimes are held for long periods in pre-trial detention, routinely ill-treated and allowed access to a lawyer only at the point where they go on trial, if at all". Rising crime is a problem in Iran. Much of it is drug-related. In the past two decades, Iran has lost more than 3,500 law enforcement officers in clashes with heavily-armed smugglers from neighbouring Afghanistan, Europe's main supplier of heroin.
By blocking Afghan heroin from reaching Europe, Iran also suffers a costly spillover effect: no drugs are produced in the country but it is flooded with cheap heroin and opium and is believed to have the world's highest rate of addiction to both. High youth unemployment also contributes to high crime rates, analysts say. "Crime is a major issue ? unfortunately it's because of the government's social and economic policy," Mr Ghaemi said in an interview.
"We don't see them tackling the root causes and these executions are another endorsement of violence - they only encourage the culture of violence." mtheodoulou@thenational.ae
