ISTANBUL, Turkey — The first time Siamak, a private sector employee who participated in Iran’s post-election protests, witnessed a killing was last June, one day after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned demonstrators he was escalating the government’s repression of street protests.
Siamak was out on the streets of downtown Tehran where groups of protesters seeking to link up with each other pelted the security forces with stones. Then, gunshots rang out.
“The first bullet hit an iron door and made a huge sound, the other got a guy near me on his arm, and the third one hit a middle-aged man in the chest and dropped him to the ground,” Siamak recollected as he sipped tea in an Istanbul cafe. He fled the country after several of his friends were arrested in Tehran in February.
“No one moved for three or four seconds,” Siamak said, remembering the shocked silence that temporarily blanketed police and protesters. “We didn’t even run.”
Ten people were killed that day, according to state-run television. It was the bloodiest day of clashes in the eight-month confrontation after Ashura, a nationwide religious festival during which 15 people lost their lives in clashes.
Human rights campaigners are calling these and other incidents “murder” and they are charging that Iran’s rate of state executions is much too high. Iran refuses to allow independent human rights monitors to visit the country. (Read a Q&A with Amnesty International about how the use of the death penalty is decreasing worldwide.)
“It’s murder, even under Iranian law,” said Renee Redman, the executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) which recently published a report on post-election abuses. “They’re breaking their own laws, using excessive force against largely peaceful demonstrators.”
Iran’s human rights record began deteriorating after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005. Today Iran is second only to China in capital punishment — 270 people were hung in 2010 and another 12 so far in 2010. Total executions in the Persian year, which started on March 21, 2009, passed 440 according to the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MKO) organization, a Paris-based opposition group whose tally is based on executions reported by state-run media.
On March 5, a U.S. State Department spokesman criticized “this disproportionate punishment” and urged Iran to free a student said to face the death penalty for participating in Ashura demonstrations.
Opposition websites reported that an appeals court confirmed a death sentence for 20-year-old Mohammad Amin Valian for “waging war against God” by throwing stones at security forces during December protests…
GlobalPost: Interview: Death penalty decreasing worldwide
BOSTON — Amnesty International released its annual survey on the use of the death penalty. The report found 18 countries executed people in 2009. China is estimated to have executed the most people, but refused to release an official figure. In the 17 other countries 714 people were executed.
Iran had one of the highest uses of the death penalty in 2009, which is described in a dispatch by Iason Athanasidis.
GlobalPost asked Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International, about the report on the use of the death penalty worldwide.
What is most notable about the new figures on the death penalty?
It is interesting to note how confined the death penalty is. Amnesty International has been doing this survey for 30 years. When we started the majority of countries had the death penalty on their books. Judicial execution was widespread. Today 95 countries have abolished the death penalty. Another nine countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes but use it for war-time crimes like treason. A further 35 countries have stopped using the death penalty — meaning that they have not executed anyone for 10 years or that they have suspended, if not abandoned, the death penalty. So 139 countries of the 192 in the United Nations have abolished or moved away from the death penalty. This is a historic trend.
And there is no question that we have seen a vivid trend away from the death penalty in 2009. In Africa, Burundi and Togo abolished the death penalty. In Europe we saw no executions at all in 2009. Belarus is the only European country to still have the death penalty, and that country did execute someone in the first months of 2010, but Belarus did not execute anyone in 2009. In all the Americas, both North and South, the United States was the only country to use the death penalty. The U.S. executed 52 people in 2009. Of that 24 were in Texas. The use of the death penalty is dwindling.
Where is the death penalty being used?
China leads the world in executions. Amnesty International has refused to publish an exact figure, because the Chinese government has not given us an official figure, saying that it is a state secret. But we know that thousands have been executed in China. In 2008 China executed at least 1,700 people and it is unlikely that number has gone down. If they are using the death penalty, they should be able to make those figures public.
Other countries that do use the death penalty include Iran with 388 by hanging or stoning, Iraq with 120 by hanging, Saudi Arabia with 69 by beheading or crucifixion, and the United States with 52 by lethal injection or electrocution. The U.S. is virtually alone among recognized democracies to use the death penalty.
In Asia the death penalty is decreasing. India occasionally executes people but it did not carry any executions out in 2009. Thailand does occasionally execute people and Japan rarely.
In sub-Saharan Africa only Botswana and Sudan carried out judicial executions in 2009. Kenya commuted the death sentences of 4,000 prisoners who were on death row. That was the largest commutation of death sentences ever known.
When you look at Texas, the 24 executions there would rank it in the top 10 countries.
