In the Daily Beast today, Senators Mark Kirk (R-Ill) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla) call attention to Iran’s “horrific” human rights record , which “deserves equal attention” as its nuclear ambitions and support of international terrorism.
Using the recent execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari as a starting point, Kirk and Rubio focus on the growing rates of executions in Iran. Citing the report of Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, the senators write:
The Shaheed report blasts Iran’s growing use of executions, with 687 in 2013 and already 411 in the first half of 2014. Under Iranian law, citizens can face executions for a shockingly broad range of non-violent crimes, including “adultery, recidivist alcohol use, drug possession and trafficking” and corruption, in addition to moharebeh (sometimes translated as “enmity against God”). Indeed, the report observes that the regime in Tehran, in practical terms, is disproportionately executing individuals from religious and ethnic minority groups “for exercising their protected rights, including freedom of expression and association.”
Iranian authorities are also continuing the “widespread and systematic use” of psychological and physical torture to obtain confessions, the Shaheed report warns. Tactics include “prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions and the threat of rape, along with physical abuse, including severe beatings, use of suspension and pressure positions, electroshock and burnings,” in addition to flogging and amputations.
In addition to the executions, torture and persecution, Kirk and Rubio note that freedom of the press is severely restricted in Iran, with 35 journalists currently being detained by the regime and millions of “websites dedicated to arts, social issues, and news,” blocked.
The senators point out that even though Iran’s current president Hassan Rouhani has the reputation as a reformer, “[t]hese egregious violations of human rights continue more than a year after Rouhani ascended to Iran’s presidency.”
Kirk and Rubio write that “we introduced the Iran Human Rights Accountability Act of 2014, not only to crack down on Iranian human rights abusers, including Khamenei and President Rouhani, but also to support the Iranian people’s democratic aspirations.”
The senators conclude:
The advance of human dignity in Iran will have much more to do with whether the regime in Tehran truly decides to change its illegitimate and destabilizing course and become a responsible actor on the world stage than any document it signs in Geneva or Vienna.
Kirk and Rubio’s article echos many of the themes covered by Canadian human rights activists Irwin Cotler, who wrote in September that Rouhani “has presided over a regime that continues to engage in massive repression.” Iran’s continuing disregard for human rights has prompted journalist Benjamin Weinthal to ask how a regime that failed to keep its commitments in the humanitarian arena “can guarantee a nuclear agreement free from weapons development.”
[Photo: Ehsan Iran / WikiCommons ]