Hamid Yazdan Panah , 20 October 2013*

Lost in the media coverage of Iran’s nuclear program and its President’s charm offensive is the grim human rights situation faced by Iranians, particularly those who dare to defy the regime. 250 people have been executed since Rouhani took office two months ago.

The Iranian regime is no stranger to controversy. Their nuclear program has been front page news for nearly a decade, taking center stage at policy debates and foreign policy discussion.  Iran’s influence in the region has also been widely covered, as it has sought to prop up proxy regimes in Syria and Iraq, while exporting terror globally. These events surely deserve serious attention and action. Lost amidst the talk of Iran’s nuclear program and new President is the grim reality of the human rights situation in Iran.

Iran is without a doubt one of the worst offenders of human rights in the world. In fact Iran leads the world in per capita executions, and with at least 500 executions in 2012 was second only to China in overall executions. So far this year they have reportedly executed at least 508 individuals.

At least 250 of these executions have come since President Hasan Rouhani took office in August. According to reports, two weeks between Sept. 11 and Sept. 25, Iranian officials hanged a record 50 people.

What is more disturbing than the rate at which Iran executes its citizens is the manner in which these acts are carried out. In keeping with its medieval style of governance, Iran continues to carry out executions in public – to create a spectacle of power and terror – in a show of complete power by the state over its citizens.
This includes the recent story of Ali M., a prisoner who was hanged for an alleged drug offense, but was found to still be alive after 12 minutes of hanging. The horror of the story is only made worse by the Iranian regime’s decision to hang Ali again once his health condition improves.

For Iranian activists on the ground, it has been a struggle to have their voices heard. It took the shocking murder of Iranian blogger Sattar Beheshti for the world to pay attention to the crimes of the Islamic Republic. Beheshti was detained by the Iranian cyber police unit, and died while in custody, reportedly as a result of extensive torture.  Beheshti’s death shows the reality that many Iranians face when speaking out against the regime.

Political prisoner Gholamreza Khosravi is another case in point. Khosravi, who was a political prisoner in the 1980’s,  was arrested in 2008 by the Ministry of Intelligence and given a 6 year prison term for allegedly providing support to the PMOI. The regime denies political prisoners any form of due process, and often arbitrarily changes the sentence given to a prisoner to serve its brutal agenda. After two retrials, Khosravi was sentenced to death after the conviction of a fresh charge of “enmity against God”, for his alleged ties to the PMOI.

Khosravi has reportedly spent 40 months in solitary confinement, and been under brutal torture and mistreatment. Amnesty International highlighted his case stating “These allegations of torture or other ill-treatment must be investigated immediately and impartially and anyone found responsible for abuses brought to justice. He should also be retried in proceedings which meet international standards for fair trial, without recourse to the death penalty”.

The use of public executions is a clear tactic to terrorize the domestic population, and the arbitrary judicial process applied to political prisoners is a clear indication of the regimes desperation to maintain a climate of fear and repression in Iran. A UN report on Iranian executions by special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Ahmad Shaheed stated; “A large number of those sentenced to death were convicted in the absence of fair trial standards”.

These practices win the regime no love from the international community, yet the mullahs in Iran have ramped up the practices, despite increased scrutiny and sanctions. Why? Because the regime is more afraid of its people than any foreign power. The 2009 uprisings shook the regime to its core, leaving little doubt about the aspirations for freedom of Iran’s population, the majority of whom are under 30 years of age.

Regardless of the new image that Iran has sought to promote through Rouhani, the human rights situation in Iran has not changed.

* Hamid Yazdan Panah is an Iranian-American human rights activist and attorney focused on immigration and asylum in the San Francisco Bay