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Iranwire – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran has lamented ongoing and widespread human rights violations in Iran, saying that human rights abusers in the country are rewarded rather than held accountable.
Speaking at a virtual meeting of a dedicated committee of the UN General Assembly Committee on Monday, Javaid Rehman said the state of human rights in Iran was “dire”.
Around 200 executions have taken place in Iran over the past year, including executions of juvenile offenders. Rehman noted that some of these sentences had been passed based on forced confessions extracted under torture. In Iran, he said, the most basic principles of a fair trial are not observed and the judicial procedure is flawed.
He also noted a high number of suspicious deaths in Iranian detention centers, including the recent case of Amir-Hossein Hatami, a 22-year-old Kurd who died after a savage beating by guards at Greater Tehran Penitentiary, and Shahin Naseri, who had testified as a witness to the torture of hanged wrestler Navid Afkari. Recently leaked CCTV footage from Evin Prison, Rehman said, had revealed “the widespread use of violence in Iranian prisons.”
Recent crackdowns on dissent all over Iran – including the security forces’ shooting of civilians in Khuzestan who were peacefully protesting the water crisis – were, Rehman said, of a piece with the brutal repression of protesters in November 2019.
The perpetrators of this repression, he said, were not only not held accountable but handed senior positions in the Iranian government. As evidence he cited the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, who sat on the Tehran “death panel” and sent countless detainees to be slaughtered during Iran’s 1988 prison massacre.
