Iran has carried out over 350 executions in the first half of 2023, with more than 42 percent of the victims belonging to the Kurdish and Baluch minority communities, according to recent reports by human rights organisations.
Activists have emphasised that the number of executions in Iran has escalated since the nation-wide protests sparked by the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in custody after being arrested by Iran’s Morality Police.
If the current pace of executions continues, 2023 is projected to witness the highest number of death sentences executed in Iran since 2015, when 972 people were executed.
Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights organisation, has reported that of the 358 death sentences carried out in the first six months of the year, 77 of the victims were Kurdish and 75 were Baluch people. Kurdish residents in the western region of the country known as Rojhilat and Baluch residents in eastern Iran also faced the harshest responses from security forces during the nationwide protests known as the “Jin Jiyan Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom) movement named after a popular protest slogan.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Iran Human Rights NGO (IHRNGO), said that the Iranian regime uses the execution of minorities and individuals accused of drug offences as a means to suppress political dissent. The IHRNGO revealed a 126 percent increase in drug-related executions compared to the previous year.
Amiry-Moghaddam stated, “The death penalty is used to create societal fear and prevent more protests. The majority of those killed are low-cost victims of the killing machine, drug defendants who are from the most marginalised communities.”
Furthermore, Moghaddam stressed that detainees in Iran do not undergo a fair trial process, and many are coerced into confessing to crimes under torture.
According to the IHRNGO report, released on 3 July, six women, five protesters, 206 drug offenders, 122 murder convicts and four individuals convicted of rape were executed between 1 January and 30 June.
Among the executions was that of Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national and former deputy defence minister of Iran. He was put to death in January on charges of espionage, a charge he denied.
Iran consistently ranks second in the world for the number of death sentences carried out, surpassed only by China.
In addition to the alarming number of executions, the situation in Iranian prisons raises serious concerns. According to statistics from the Hengaw, at least 20 prisoners died in Iranian prisons during the first half of 2023. Thirteen of these cases, accounting for 65 percent of the total, involved Kurdish prisoners.
The report also revealed that four out of 20 known to have lost their lives in Iranian prisons were Baluch prisoners. Three of the 20 prisoners died in suspicious circumstances, including suspected poisoning. Four were killed under torture carried out by Iranian government agents and seven died due to illness and delays in receiving medical treatment.
It is worth noting that over the past three months, at least three political prisoners arrested in connection with the recent nationwide protests have been killed under torture carried out by Iranian security agencies, Hengaw said.
According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), Iran has arrested more than 21,000 protesters and killed 630 since Amini’s death.
