The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk denounced on Tuesday, May 9, "the appallingly high number" of executions this year in Iran, which amounts to more than ten per week on average.
Since January 1, at least 209 people have been executed in Iran, mostly for drug-related offenses, according to a UN statement, which stressed, however, that the figure is likely to be higher.
An "abominable" record
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On average, since the beginning of the year, more than ten people are put to death every week in Iran, making it one of the countries with the highest number of executions in the world," Turk said in a statement. "At this rate, it is worrying that Iran is on the same path as last year, when about 580 people were reportedly executed," he added, calling the death toll "abominable."
A spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, stressed at a regular press briefing in Geneva that if the current trend continues this year, "this will represent one of the highest rates of application of the death penalty in Iran since 2015" when "972 executions were reported". Only a small number of States still impose and apply the death penalty.
Hangings for blasphemy
On Monday, two men, Sadrollah Fazeli Zare and Youssef Mehrdad, were executed by hanging in Iran for blasphemy, prompting condemnation from Washington and human rights NGOs. And on Saturday, an Iranian-Swedish dissident, Habib Chaab, convicted of leading an Arab separatist group in the west of the country and sentenced to death for "terrorism", was executed.
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The UN reports that according to some sources, at least 45 people, including 22 from the Baloch minority, have been executed in the last 14 days alone. Most of them were executed on drug-related grounds. "Imposing the death penalty for drug-related offences is incompatible with international human rights standards," Türk said.
The UN recalls that the Human Rights Committee prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for all crimes, with the exception of the "most serious crimes", i.e. those of extreme gravity involving intentional homicide, which do not include drug-related offences.
