Iran executed 11 members of the Baluch minority on drug charges within a 48-hour timeframe, according to an NGO’s report on Wednesday August 2, sparking concerns over the disproportionate targeting of this community in a surge of executions.

Iran hanged 11 members of the Baluch minority on drugs charges within a 48-hour period, an NGO said Wednesday, raising alarm the community is disproportionately targeted in a spate of executions.

Nine Iranian Baluchis and two Baluchi citizens of neighboring Afghanistan were hanged between the early morning on Sunday and early Tuesday, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said.

The group added that it recorded a total of 61 executions across Iran in July as Iran presses ahead with a surge in capital punishment that has now seen the country put to death 423 people this year.

Campaigners accuse Iran of using capital punishment as an instrument to spread fear throughout the population in the wake of the protest movement that erupted last September over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22. The Iranian-Kurdish woman had been detained for allegedly flouting the Islamic republic’s strict dress rules for women.

IHR said that while members of the Baluch minority, who adhere to the Sunni strain of Islam and not the Shiism predominant in Iran, make up only two to six percent of the population, they accounted for a third of all executions in 2022.

IHR said almost half of the 256 people executed on drug-related charges in 2022 were members of the Baluch community.

Iran is the world’s second biggest executioner after China for which no data is available, according to another rights group, Amnesty International.

 

Disturbing Voices

In a distressing voicemail recorded from Urmia prison, Hadi Rostami expressed fear that his finger amputation sentence would be carried out very soon.

“They are going to cut off my fingers,” announced Hadi Rostami in the voicemail message from Urmia prison.

Sentenced to finger amputation in 2017 for “theft,” he fears the imminent execution of his sentence. Hadi has undertaken multiple hunger strikes against this barbaric and unjust punishment. He claims to have been subject to torture in prison for challenging the legitimacy of his sentence.

Khalil Wakim, with AFP