Iran-HRM – The Iranian regime flogged five political prisoners and peaceful activists June.
All of those flogged are people who have been arrested for peaceful activities or exercising their rights to freedom of speech.
On Monday, June 8, the flogging sentence for Mohamamd Bagher Souri, detained during the nationwide November 2019 protests was carried out in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary.
Souri was sentenced to five years of prison and 80 lashes. He was lashed 35 times by one of the prison guards. Souri’s back and feet were bruised and injured after the lashing.
On the same day, two men were flogged for taking part in the November 2019 protests in the city of Urmia, northwestern Iran. Azerbaijani rights activists Ali Azizi and Eliar Hosseinzadeh, were lashed 20 times for “disturbing public order”.
On June 5, a man in southwestern Iran was flogged 55 times on June 6 for criticizing and “refusing to apologize” to the local representative of the regime’s Supreme Leader.
Ruhollah Barzin, who works in a bakery in Charam, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province was flogged due to complaints from Seyed Nourallah Afshar, Charam’s head of Friday prayers.
Last year, Barzeen was prosecuted and sentenced to 55 lashes for writing a post critical of the local cleric and because of the comments written under his post.
In an interview with the state-run daily Tabnak, the cleric considered the implementation of the flogging sentence part of his civil rights and said that that he did not take back his complaint because the “the young man refused to apologize”.
Earlier on June 1, Rasoul Taleb Moghaddam, labor rights activist was arrested and punished by 74 lashes.
Rasoul Taleb Moghaddam, a member of the Syndicate of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company Workers, who was among dozens arrested on the International Labor Day, May 1, 2019, in Tehran, surrendered himself at Tehran’s notorious Evin on June 1.
As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Iran is legally obliged to forbid torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. However, Iranian law continues to allow internationally banned corporal punishments including amputation, stoning and flogging and claims to justify it in the name of protecting religious morals.
Under Iranian law, more than 100 “offences” are punishable by flogging. These cover a wide array of acts, ranging from theft, assault, vandalism, defamation and fraud to acts that should not be criminalized at all such as adultery, intimate relationships between unmarried men and women, “breach of public morals” and consensual same-sex sexual relations.
Furthermore, the regime regularly hands out flogging sentences to protesters and dissidents.