Factional infighting, paranoia, economic ineptitude and deepening confrontation with the West have characterized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s leadership. However, a second-term presidency launched amid bloodily suppressed protests in 2009 now appears to be assuming an even more vicious character as reports accumulate of ongoing, secret mass executions and new waves of political repression.
Hard facts are hard to come by in a country where independent reporting is all but a fond memory, but Iranian human rights groups, international watchdogs and country experts all suggest the regime has embarked on what in effect is a judicial killing spree.
DRUG TRAFFICKING?
Ostensibly, the regime is cracking down on drug trafficking and other criminal activity. In truth, activists say, Tehran is pursuing a campaign of public intimidation and covert killing to subdue political opposition and quell turbulence caused by the Arab Spring revolts.
According to Amnesty International, Iran has admitted executing 190 people in the first six months of this year; an additional 130 reported executions have gone unacknowledged by the state. These figures put Iran on course for a record year for capital punishment. Last year, 252 people were executed, according to official figures, with 300 more also believed to have been killed.
Iran Human Rights, an independent monitoring organization, says the true picture is much worse. It says 25 people were hanged in one day — Sunday last week — in Ghezel Hesar prison in Karaj, west of Tehran. The hangings, supposedly all drug-related, were not reported by official media.
The same report said another seven people were hanged the same day in Evin prison in Tehran. It alluded to further, uncorroborated mass executions in prisons in Khorasan Province last year.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, another independent pressure group, reported last month that 26 inmates of Vakilabad prison in Mashhad were hanged on June 15. It quoted Mashhad prosecutor Mahmoud Zoghi as admitting “high numbers of executions” over the past two-and-a-half years. Zoghi said the rise was because of a high volume of drug trafficking cases.
“The execution statistics are proportionate and foreign media unjustifiably exaggerate in this subject,” he said.
ALMOST TWO A DAY
The number of public hangings is also on the increase. Since the start of this year, up to 13 men have been executed in public, eight of them since April 16, an Amnesty report said.
Iran reportedly defied international law by executing two juvenile offenders in Bandar Abbas on April 20. Overall, Iran’s execution “average” is running at almost two people a day in this year, making the regime the world’s No. 2 executioner after China.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
RSS