Iran: RSF and the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran Call for an end to executions

On the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran call on the Iranian authorities to put an end to capital executions which target in particular prisoners of opinion, of which journalists.

RSF and the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran call for mobilization, especially on social networks with the hashtag #notoexecution, to denounce the use of the death penalty and save the lives of prisoners of conscience and journalists Iranians.

The execution by hanging of Iranian wrestler Navid Afkari, 27, on September 12, caused an outcry. About 40 members of the Human Rights Council , UN and European Union human rights experts have condemned what some have called “summary execution”. Navid Afkari had been convicted of manslaughter and “moharebeh”, the war against God – charges he had always denied.

After China, Iran is the second country in the world where the most executions take place . Based on Sharia, Islamic criminal law in Iran provides for the death penalty for many crimes. Nearly thirty people are currently languishing in prison awaiting the application of their death sentences. Among them, the director of the Telegram channel AmadNews and the news site of the same name, Rouhollah Zam , whose sentence was pronounced on June 30. 

” Currently, at least thirty prisoners of conscience are awaiting execution on death row,” deplores Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the Center for Human Rights Defenders (Defender of Human Rights Center, DHRC) in Iran . The Iranians have fought for years to eradicate the death penalty from the Penal Code. Today, it is urgent that the international community come to their aid. “

Over the past 20 years, at least 20 journalists , bloggers and citizen journalists have been sentenced to death, and the Islamic Republic is still the country in the world to have officially put the most journalists to death. over the past 50 years. In the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution, around twenty reporters close to the Shah’s regime, such as Ali Asgar Amirani, Simon Farzami, Nasrollah Arman, or circles close to the left, such as Said Soltanpour and Rahman Hatefi-Monfared , were killed by a firing squad. 

“ Since 1979, Iran has executed thousands of men and women including twenty journalists – all of them have been convicted by unfair courts , denounces RSF secretary general Christophe Deloire. Sentencing to death prisoners of conscience, including journalists, amounts to the most extreme repression of freedom of expression. It is time for the Islamic Republic to finally renounce these cruel and old-fashioned punishments . ”

Iran has never signed the second optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aimed at abolishing the death penalty. The country even voted against all of the United Nations General Assembly resolutions that followed calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Iran, which fell three places in the most recent edition of the World Press Freedom Index , now sits 173rd out of 180 countries. 

Copyright ©2016, Reporters Without Borders. Used with the permission of Reporters Without Borders(RSF), CS 90247 75083 Paris Cedex 02 https://rsf.org

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