Fréderike Geerdink
We need to speak out against the death penalty more. The number of countries still using this barbaric punishment is at an all-time low, but the number of executions is actually rising. And my bet is that this is the start of a global trend. After all, the death penalty is a handy tool in the hands of fascists, a particular kind of leader that is rapidly gaining global momentum.
The latest horror story about the death penalty comes from Iran, and it’s about a Kurdish man. Both are not coincidences. Iran is again the country that has carried out the most death penalties worldwide in 2024, Amnesty concluded in a report. Minorities, among whom Kurds, are disproportionally affected.
The story revolves around a man named Hamid Huseynnejad Heyderanlu. He is from Rojhilat (Kurdistan in Iran), but his mother’s family is originally from Bakur (in Turkey), the province of Van, bordering Iran. He was sentenced to death for a crime – it’s unknown which crime – that was committed while he was visiting his family in Bakur. His mother has given details in a video message. There are phone records that prove where he was, and there is a stamp in his passport saying he left the country for a trip before the date of the crime.
Children
Initially, the family didn’t make the case public. But now they are desperate. Hamid, who is married and has three children, has been in prison for two years now, of which one year in full isolation. He was forced to confess to the crime under heavy torture. Hamid’s mother calls on human rights organisations and the general public to stand with her, and demand her son’s release.
Hopefully, publicity helps and Hamid’s life will be saved. Hopefully, this will also work for three Kurdish women on death row. They are Warisheh Moradi, Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammedi. They are political prisoners and sentenced for the crime of standing up for humanity. There has been quite a lot of public attention for their cases already, including from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. So far, the regime doesn’t blink an eye, but hope hasn’t been lost yet.
Authors Abbas Alizadeh and Soran Mansournia have phrased it well here on Medya News: “Defending their lives is not just about individual justice; it is a stand for the fundamental belief that peaceful activism and the pursuit of human rights should never be punishable.”
Sympathy
But I want to speak out too for those who have committed a crime. Hengaw often has news about Kurds and other minorities, like Baloch citizens, being hanged for crimes like murder or drugs trafficking. These people usually attract far less sympathy from the public. They knew the punishment for what they did, so they brought it on themselves, right?
Probably, they knew, but that’s the thing with the death penalty: research has shown again and again that the death penalty doesn’t help bring crime down. If it has any effect on crime rates, it works the other way around: the more violent the state, the more violent the citizens. But such statistics are, eventually, irrelevant. Because the state should not have the right to take anybody’s life. Life is sacred, and the right to life is unconditional. The latter means that whatever you do, even taking somebody’s life, it does mean you lose your right to life.
In short, the death penalty should be abolished everywhere for every crime. It’s merely a tool of repressive regimes to keep the citizens under control and to intimidate them. Which is why I am worried. For many years, the trend has been that one country after the other abolished the death penalty. With authoritarianism on the rise, it could very well be that the trend will be reversed. Or that the number of crimes you can get the death penalty for, goes up.
Kurds
The signs are there. The most worrying sign is the blatant disrespect for human life. It’s easy to point at Iran or China (the latter doesn’t publish numbers about executions so it might be much higher than Iran), or name the US as one of the few western nations that still carry out the death penalty, but Europe isn’t much better. For example my country, the Netherlands, has long since abolished the death penalty, but it is supporting the genocide in Gaza and doesn’t hold Turkey to account for its ongoing repression, including murder, of Kurds. Turkey has abolished the death penalty but it doesn’t shy away from extrajudicial murders in Rojava (Kurdistan in Syria) and Başur (in Iraq).
As always, I plea for looking at the larger picture. The right to life and the sanctity of life are under pressure. In Iran, the lives of Hamid Huseynnejad Heyderanlu, Warisheh Moradi, Pakhshan Azizi and Sharifeh Mohammedi are at stake. I deeply hope their lives will be saved. But if that happens, please don’t stop worrying about life.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Bluesky (or X) or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan.
