The seven executions of women in Iran in just one month is half the average annual rate
The clerical regime has stepped up executions in the past month with a shocking rise in the executions of women in Iran.
Since November 22, 2021, at least 39 persons, including seven women, have been hanged in various prisons across the country.
They include the execution on December 19, 2021, of a Kurdish political prisoner, Haidar Ghorbani, 40, and the father of two, after five years of captivity.
The Iranian Judiciary handed down his death penalty based on forced confessions extracted from him under torture. They carried out the death penalty without informing his family and/or lawyer. The intelligence services did not hand Haidar’s body to his family and buried him secretly.
The entire “legal” procedure, from the beginning to the end, violated all international standards and humanitarian law.
On the same day, two Baluch citizens were hanged in the Prison of Shiraz. One of them was Na’eim Shahbakhsh, 38, the father of four, including two children under ten years.
Again, the authorities did not inform his family before the execution. Therefore, he died without having a final visit with his family.
Seven women were hanged in one month
Four of the seven women hanged over the past month have not been identified.
The authorities of the Central Prison of Yasuj carried out the death penalties for a couple on November 23, 2021, on murder charges.
On drug-related charges, Maryam Khakpour, 41, was hanged on November 25 in Dastgerd Prison of Isfahan. She had repeatedly claimed innocence saying the drugs belonged to her husband, sentenced to 18 years.
A 2017 amendment to the Iranian regime’s law strictly limits the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses. The executions on drug-related charges have nevertheless continued.
On December 9, 2021, six inmates, including three unidentified women, were hanged in the Central Prison of Kerman.
Massoumeh Zare’i, 40, was hanged in the Prison of Amol at dawn on December 14, 2021. She had a 21-year-old daughter and was in prison for seven years for the murder of her husband, a drug addict who often battered her and did not consent to divorce.
Fatemeh Aslani was hanged on December 19, 2021, in Dastgerd Prison of Isfahan for murdering her husband. She had been on death row for nine years despite pleading not guilty.
Ebrahim Ra’isi oversees surge in executions
The seven hanging executions of women in Iran during just one month are noteworthy, particularly because, since 2013, the average number of women executed in Iran has been 15 per year.
The Iranian regime has executed some 350 persons since January 2021, compared to the 255 executed in 2020. Of course, the actual number of those executed by the regime must be considered higher because the regime executes many in secret and away from the public’s eyes.
The significant rise in the number of death penalties carried out in Iran in 2021 is an outcome of the presidency of Ebrahim Ra’isi, who is notorious for his direct role in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in just a few months in 1988.
In the face of growing societal discontent, The inhuman clerical regime has found the only way to preserve its rule in intensifying executions, torture, and repression.
The Iranian Resistance has repeatedly urged the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as the European Union and its member states, to strongly condemn the growing number of executions in Iran and to take immediate action to rescue prisoners on death row.
With this month’s surge in executions, this imperative becomes ever more urgent.
No talks, no ties with the world’s chief executioner of women
Iran is the world’s chief executioner of women.
The Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) genuinely believes that women are the force for change. It urges all women’s rights advocates and activists worldwide to play an active role concerning the fate of their sisters in Iran and help stop the executions of women in Iran.
Women should urge their governments to make all economic and political relations with Tehran contingent on a halt to executions, especially the executions of women in Iran and torture of political prisoners.
They should urge their governments to refer the dossier of the clerical regime’s human rights abuses to the UN Security Council.
The UN and its member states should form an international tribunal to hold the leaders of the Iranian regime, especially its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, its president Ebrahim Ra’isi, its Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, and its parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, accountable for four decades of crimes against humanity and genocide.
The freedom-loving women worldwide must not withstand their governments negotiating and shaking hands with a murderous regime, let alone appeasing it.
The women of Iran look to their sisters around the world to lend them support in their tortuous struggle for freedom and equality.
Help stop executions of women in Iran!
