Rights group says human rights violations in Iran increasing
Published: Monday, November 10, 2008
15:00GMT—10:00AM/EST
HUMAN RIGHTS – EBADI – EXECUTIONS
Washington, 10 November (IranVNC)—The Center for the Defense of Human Rights [CDHR], the rights group headed by Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, today published a statement criticizing the Iranian government for its human rights violations during the three-month period ending 22 September.
“In this connection, four juveniles under the age of 18 and 41 adults were executed, and six individuals were publicly lashed,” the group said in its latest quarterly statement.
The four juvenile offenders are identified as Rahman Shahidi, Hassan Mozaffari, Reza Hejazi and Behnam Zare. Shahidi and Mozaffari were reportedly executed in the southern port city of Bushehr, Hejazi in the central city of Esfahan, and Zare in the southern city of Shiraz.
Iranian press reports said that Zare, 18, was convicted of murdering his friend at the age of 15, and that Hejazi, 20, had allegedly murdered another individual following a dispute when he was 15 years-old.
Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which prohibit the execution of individuals who committed crimes when they were minors.
Numerous international bodies and human rights groups have called on Iran to ban the execution of juvenile offenders.
Last month, Iran’s Judiciary circulated a directive ordering the country’s judges to reduce to life imprisonment the sentences for juvenile offenders who have been sentenced to death. The Judiciary later said that the directive does not apply to cases of qisas, or retribution, which the courts consider a private matter.
CDHR said that four individuals in the southern city of Borazjan and six others in Sabzevar in Iran’s northeast were hanged in public during the three-month reporting period, despite a Judiciary directive calling for an end to public executions.
The group also warned about the limitations being imposed on civil and political rights movements.
“The realm of private freedoms is becoming more limited day-by-day, and possible and desirable venues for political and social activities are becoming more restricted,” the statement said.
The situation facing religious minorities in Iran has further deteriorated, the rights group reports, specifically pointing to an increase in human rights violations towards the Sunni inhabitants of the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province, and generally, towards the Baha’is.
The report notes that “the national interests and the country’s advancement are dependent on the enforcing the laws and respecting basic rights and freedoms of individuals.”
The CDHR concludes its statement by “wishing for a world where freedom of thought and expression and absence of fear and poverty would become … realities in the lives of individuals.”
Source: Center for the Defense of Human Rights report
© IranVNC 2008. All rights reserved.