Iran executes 2 other protesters and sentences 3 to death 3:29
Editor's Note:
Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former producer and correspondent for CNN, is a world affairs columnist.
She is a weekly opinion contributor for CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post and a columnist for the World Politics Review.
The opinions expressed in this column belong solely to its author.
(CNN) --
"Dad, my sentence is death," Mohammad Mehdi Karami told his father in a phone call from prison last month.
Then on Saturday, the 21-year-old karate champion was executed by the Iranian regime.
Karami, an Iranian Kurdish, was hanged on the same day as Seyed Mohammad Hosseini, a 20-year-old volunteer coach for children.
Both were accused of killing a member of the Basij paramilitary force.
Apparently, in the phone call, the younger Karami told his father that he had been tortured into making a false confession.
All 16 defendants in that case have denied the charges.
Their deaths add to the growing number of young protesters killed since Iranians took to the streets nearly four months ago in women-led demonstrations sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Amini, also an Iranian Kurdish woman, died in police custody after being detained by morality police for improperly wearing the hijab, the Muslim headscarf that Iran's clerical rulers force all women to wear.
The death count and unrelenting heartbreak will almost certainly continue.
This is because the regime's most powerful internal weapon, its ability to kill protesters in order to terrorize and intimidate them, is not producing the expected results.
Despite the growing number of deaths, the Iranians, fed up with the repression, do not give up.
Heartbreaking pleas of fathers and mothers ignored: Iran hanged 2 more protesters for protesting against the government
The young Iranian protesters are showing an almost unfathomable level of bravery.
It is up to them to continue their fight or not, demanding "azadi, azadi!", "freedom!"
in farsi.
Stunned onlookers outside Iran have other decisions to make: How will they respond as the regime kills its young?
So far, the reaction has been totally inadequate.
The Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights warns of the "serious risk of mass execution of protesters".
So far it estimates that security forces have killed 481 people, including 64 minors, and believes that 109 protesters are at risk of execution at this time.
The executions come after protesters are accused and allegedly tortured into confessing to crimes they did not commit, as Karami told her father over the phone that day.
Human rights groups affirm that the processes have been farces, false trials, without any hint of procedural guarantees.
Hours after their executions, two other young protesters on death row – Mohammed Broghani, just 19, and Mohammed Ghobadlu, 22 – were taken from their cells into solitary confinement, raising fears that their execution was imminent.
His supporters spent the night massing around the prison, hoping to stop possible executions.
At the time of writing this note, they are still alive.
The first person executed in connection with the protests was 23-year-old Mohsen Shekari in early December.
A viral video that supposedly shows his mother receiving the news of his death is appalling.
A few days later, Iran hung 23-year-old Majidreza Rahnavard from a construction crane in a public square in the city of Mashhad.
He had been convicted of "enmity with God" in another sham trial in which he was found guilty of stabbing two Basich paramilitaries.
Just over three weeks after his arrest, he was executed before a crowd, his lifeless body suspended from a wire visible in photographs released by the regime.
The court-appointed attorney had offered no defense.
Hardly anyone expected the demonstrations to last so long.
The risks seemed to outweigh the chances of success.
"Let's face it," I wrote in October, the protests have been inspiring, "but also terrifying to watch."
We knew the regime would respond brutally, and it has.
OPINION |
The relentless bravery of Iranian protesters is a moral test for the West
Beatings, shootings and executions have not put an end to the protests.
On the contrary, the latest executions have reignited the protests in the universities.
The young men seem determined to risk everything for a chance at a different life.
In many ways, the calls to end theocracy seem unstoppable.
For the rest of the world, there is even more moral clarity on the issue of supporting the protesters now that Iran has begun supplying Russia with the weapons it is using to destroy Ukraine's civilian infrastructure.
As Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky told the US Congress, with Iran, "Russia has found an ally in [its] genocidal policy... one terrorist has found the other."
Iran claims it only sold drones to Russia before the war.
Iran admits it supplied drones to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine
Western powers strongly condemned the Iranian executions almost immediately, with protesters taking to the streets in some world capitals.
That solidarity is important, but it is not enough.
The world can do more.
Germany, one of Tehran's main trading partners, recently announced that it is suspending export credits and investment guarantees for trade with Iran.
He had already declared that the situation did not allow "maintaining normalcy with Iran."
Responsible governments around the world must restrict trade and quietly persuade other major trading partners, such as the United Arab Emirates, India and Turkey, to review their trade relations.
It is also abundantly clear that efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—should be declared over.
Biden has already admitted that the deal "is dead," though he refuses to make it official.
The JCPOA will not be resurrected, and even if that were possible, it would provide massive funding to a regime that is not only killing its own people and sowing unrest in its region, but also aiding the destruction of another country in its association. with Russia.
The European Union should waste no time in following through on the Dutch proposal to classify the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, as the United States has already done.
Tehran rejects the label, but the evidence of the IRGC's activities is plentiful, with its intervention in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
On the diplomatic front, Western nations, led by the United States, should give more prominence to Iran's actions.
Take the case to the main diplomatic forums.
Force a vote of condemnation in the UN Security Council, where Russia will doubtless veto it, and perhaps China too.
Let's see despots side by side.
And, if Iran does not relent, aim for the visas of Iranians who enjoy their travels in the West.
If Iran continues to kill its young students, perhaps the children of Iranian officials and regime allies should know that their ability to study at American and European universities could soon end.
This is the fight of the Iranian people, as it should be.
It is your country.
Their lives.
But the rest of the world must do more than issue statements and express disapproval.
As the Iranian people risk everything to fight for their freedom against a regime that has inflicted so much damage in so many places, they deserve more support than they have received.
Iran
