Amnesty International reports a significant increase in the number of executions in Iran, particularly for drugs-related charges, with at least 173 people hanged this year.
The number of people executed in Iran on drugs-related charges has tripled this year compared with 2022, Amnesty International said Friday, warning such hangings were happening at a “shameless” rate.
Iran has hanged seven men in cases related to the protest movement that erupted last September. Still, campaigners have said hangings on all charges, particularly drugs-related, have surged recently.
The rights group said at least 173 people convicted of drug-related offenses had been hanged this year “after systematically unfair trials,” adding that the figure was nearly three times higher than last year.
Such executions comprised two-thirds of all the executions in Iran in the first five months of 2023, predominantly impacting “people from marginalized and economically disadvantaged backgrounds,” Amnesty added.
It said members of Iran’s Baluch ethnic minority accounted for around 20 percent of the recorded executions, “despite making up only five percent of Iran’s population.”
Executions in Iran have fallen recently after a 2017 amendment to the country’s anti-narcotics laws sought to limit the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.
But campaigners now argue Iran is executing people on all charges to strike fear into the population as the leadership seeks to quell the protest movement.
The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and member states providing funding to its projects in Iran are now under increasing pressure to condemn the execution surge.
Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said Thursday at least 307 people had been executed in 2023, a rise of more than 75 percent compared with the same period last year, while at least 142 people were executed in May—the highest monthly figure since 2015.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
