Surge in Iran executions may be sign of internal power shifts

Iranian authorities executed at least 852 people since June 2013, about 799 of them this year, according to a UN investigator.

UNITED NATIONS // Iranian president Hassan Rouhani hasn’t lived up to his campaign pledge to improve human rights, even as he has sought to improve relations with world powers through nuclear negotiations, a United Nations investigator said.

Iranian leaders are using the nuclear discussions to show the Islamic Republic’s “positive aspects, as it were” while ignoring human rights issues as a “backwater that people don’t want to talk about,” Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, said in New York at a breakfast on Monday hosted by non-governmental organisations Human Rights Watch and Impact Iran.

Mr Shaheed expressed alarm at the “surge” in executions in the past year. Iranian authorities executed at least 852 people since June 2013, about 799 of them this year, Mr Shaheed said. Eight were under the age of 18, a sharp increase from what has been one juvenile every year or two, said Mr Shaheed, a former Maldivian diplomat who will present a report critical of Iran’s human rights record to the UN General Assembly today.

That issue was highlighted by the October 25 hanging of Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, who had been the focus of an international human rights campaign following her murder conviction for killing a man she said tried to rape her. Earlier this year, Mr Shaheed said Jabbari had acted in self-defence.

The US state department condemned the execution given the “serious concerns with the fairness of the trail and the circumstances surrounding this case, including reports of confessions made under severe duress.”

The increase in executions may show some internal power shifts, said Mr Shaheed. Developments in Iran’s central government, such as the removal of those critical of the authorities, shows there is “tension between various factions in the country,” the former Maldives foreign minister said.

Mr Rouhani appears to be politically constrained and so is “unable” to “convert his promises” on human rights into action, Mr Shaheed said.

Mr Shaheed said there has been a reduction of access to education, noting that the student population is a group pressing for more rights. He also cited a purge of “non- Islamic” content in classes and the dismissal of professors who “may have been seen as nonconformist.”

These moves show policies predating Mr Rouhani, which are designed to “purify the system and purge it” of non-Islamic elements, are now “seeing fuller effect,” he said

The state of women’s rights is a key indicator, Mr Shaheed said, citing a “family excellence bill now in the pipeline” that he said favours married men for employment over unmarried women.

Female students accounted for 48 per cent of university enrolment in 2012-13, down from 62 per cent in 2007-2008, and there has been no improvement in the level of women’s participation in the workforce, which stands at 16 per cent, Mr Shaheed wrote in his report.

At least 35 journalists are currently detained in Iran as well as hundreds of ethnic and religious minorities such as Baha’is, Christians, and Sunni Muslims on allegations of crimes related to national security, Mr Shaheed wrote.

* Bloomberg