Iran bucks UN resolution condemning death penalty for minors, rights abuses

On November 20, the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee, whose absorption includes humanitarian matters, approved a draught solution connected the deteriorating quality rights concern successful Iran.

The solution condemned Iran’s alarming summation successful superior punishment cases, noting the Islamic Republic had enactment radical to decease "on the ground of forced confessions, and without just proceedings and owed process."

The assembly besides expressed concern implicit Iran’s continued imposition of the decease punishment against minors and called connected Tehran to halt "the wide and systematic usage of arbitrary arrests and detention."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei criticized the resolution, calling it a "a large governmental and motivation disgrace for the West."

"The solution was a wide motion of reducing the noble conception of quality rights to a instrumentality for exerting governmental unit connected autarkic nations," Baghaei said.

As a antiauthoritarian system, helium said, Iran considers itself obligated to support and beforehand quality rights and fulfill its planetary obligations based connected the principles enshrined successful the constitution, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

That assertion is misleading.

Iran is 1 of the past countries connected Earth to execute individuals who committed crimes arsenic minors. Iran has denied detainees owed process, subjected them to torture and secured convictions based connected forced confessions. The bulk of the decease sentences carried retired by Iranian courts are for drug-related offenses.

Thus, Iran systematically violates its obligations arsenic a enactment to the U.N. International Covenant connected Civil and Political Rights. Adopted successful 1966, the ICCPR states that for countries that person not abolished the decease penalty:

• "A condemnation of decease whitethorn beryllium imposed lone for the astir superior crimes;
• [it] shall not beryllium imposed for crimes committed by persons beneath 18 years of property and shall not beryllium carried retired connected large women;
• [that] nary 1 shall beryllium subjected to arbitrary apprehension oregon detention;
• [and that] detainees shall beryllium treated with humanity, support their inherent dignity and close to owed process."

According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights nonprofit organization, Iran executed astatine slightest 70 radical convicted of offenses portion juveniles betwixt 2010 and 2023.

In August 2022, British quality rights radical Amnesty International reported that Iran tin condemnation girls arsenic young arsenic 9, and boys arsenic young arsenic 15, to execution.

Reports indicate that Iranian authorities person subjected pistillate prisoners, including minors, to forced matrimony and rape to forestall them from "going to heaven" aft execution, based connected the theological content that virgins spell to heaven.

In 2021, U.N. experts estimated determination were 85 juvenile offenders connected decease enactment successful Iran, with the bulk of those sentenced to decease coming “from marginalized groups.”

Iran Human Rights said the nonstop fig of juveniles connected decease enactment successful Iranian prisons is chartless owed to a "lack of transparency successful the Iranian Judiciary."

Iran has ramped up executions pursuing the 2022-23 wide "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests sparked by the decease of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman. Amini died successful constabulary custody aft Iran’s morality police, the Guidance Patrol, detained her for "improperly" wearing a mandatory headscarf.

Amnesty International said Iran executed 853 radical successful 2023, a 48% summation implicit the erstwhile year, to "instill fearfulness successful the colonisation and tighten their grip connected power."

Members of the Baluchi taste minority, who comprise an estimated 5% of Iran’s population, accounted for 20% of recorded executions, Amnesty International reported.

Iran Human Rights said 56% of those executed were sentenced connected drug-related charges, contempt the ICCPR’s stance that the decease punishment should beryllium imposed lone "for the astir superior crimes."

Iran Human Rights besides said Iran executed 8 "Woman, Life, Freedom" protesters successful 2023.

Thirty-four percent of radical who Iranian courts sentenced to decease were convicted connected execution charges.

Iranian authorities besides routinely trust connected forced confessions, including successful superior cases, to unafraid convictions.

As antecedently reported by VOA, Iranian state-run media regularly broadcasts forced confessions, adjacent though forced confessions are not admissible successful tribunal and are amerciable nether Iranian and planetary law.

Victims person described their torturers utilizing lighters, cutters, cattle prods and cables, arsenic good arsenic forcibly injecting them with hallucinatory drugs and subjecting them to years successful solitary confinement, to elicit confessions.

Two years earlier the Amini protests, the International Federation for Human Rights and Justice for Iran reported that Iranian state-owned media had broadcast astatine slightest 355 forced confessions betwixt 2009 and 2019.

In August, Amnesty International said Iranian authorities arbitrarily executed Reza Rasaei, a 34-year-old subordinate of the Kurdish taste minority, implicit his transportation with the Amini protests pursuing a "grossly unfair trial."

Amnesty International said Iranian authorities subjected Rasaei to beatings, electrical shocks, suffocation and intersexual unit to unit a confession from him.

Rasaei was the 10th idiosyncratic executed successful transportation with the Amini protests.