Portraits of Iranian men, reportedly executed by the Iranian government during protests in Iran, are displayed during a demonstration at the Ergife Palace Hotel in Rome [Getty]
The ongoing US war on Iran is turning attention away from the Iranian government’s ongoing crackdown on free speech in the country, the freedom of expression monitoring organisation Index on Censorship has warned.
Fighting has intensified over the past week, with heavy US strikes across the country’s south and Iranian attacks on American forces across the region.
But Index on Censorship said the conflict was eclipsing an issue that has long defined Iran’s poor human rights record.
“The renewed bombing of Iran has done a darn good job of diverting attention away from the Iranian government’s own utterly disturbing record when it comes to freedom of expression,” the group said on Friday in a statement titled ‘Terror in Tehran.’
Iran consistently ranks near the bottom in global human freedom, civil liberties, and democratic indices, and is officially classified as “Not Free” due to severe state repression.
Iranian authorities –acting through the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and Basij militias – were accused of killing thousands of people during anti-government protests in January, in one of the largest nationwide uprisings the country had seen in years.
Some human rights monitors estimate the death toll may have been in the tens of thousands, although those figures have not been independently verified. The Iranian government’s officially acknowledged death toll was 3,117 people.
“So brutal is the regime there that it can sometimes feel like if you blink, you’ll miss another atrocity, like the execution of a protester this week,” said Index in its statement.
It identified the executed protestor as Mohammad Amini Dehaghani, who it said was accused of setting fire to a governor’s office in Isfahan. He was also accused of distributing anti-government propaganda.
It warned that 12 more prisoners might be at imminent risk of execution following Iran’s Supreme Court upholding their death sentences.
Iran is consistently one of the world’s leading countries for capital punishment and accounts for the vast majority of state-sanctioned killings in the Middle East.
Executions of protesters and political prisoners have increased since the unrest in January.
“The country has a playbook. The deaths of four members of the paramilitary during January’s protests have been pinned on these 12 people, and others too. The evidence is typically flimsy, the proceedings opaque, independent legal representation denied, and convictions rest on confessions that have apparently been extracted under torture,” Index on Censorship’s statement said.
“Perhaps the people were involved in killings, if these killings even happened, perhaps not. In Iran the truth doesn’t matter. It isn’t about justice (which frankly should never be met through capital punishment anyway). It’s about making the cost of speaking up so great that no one does,” it added.
It also pointed to the case of British couple Lindsay and Craig Foreman, who were arrested while travelling in Iran in February and each sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges they deny. It said Craig’s sentence was recently extended by a further two years after he spoke to the media, arguing that the move demonstrated the authorities’ willingness to punish individuals for communicating with the press.
The group also said the couple had been denied due process, including access to legal representation, translation services and a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves.
A crackdown on university campuses in Tehran was also continuing, said the organisation.
“Students are being summoned for disciplinary hearings, they’re receiving threatening phone calls, they’re having access blocked to academic portals and in more extreme cases they’re being expelled from universities.”
