They're gonna get right on it, I'm sure...
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A body of United Nations experts on Friday urged Iranian authorities to immediately halt all executions, warning that Tehran is among the select few nations that still employs capital punishment and by far the “most prolific” per capita.
“Iran has seen too much death: lives lost to war and lives taken by their own State,” the experts said in a press release.
“Iran’s death penalty is used to silence dissent, with broadly defined national security offences recasting peaceful activity as a threat. That must change,” they said. “Iran’s own history shows that grievances left unaddressed resurface, however brutally they are repressed. Executions do not end dissent, but breed the next wave of it.”
Iranian forces have long used executions and public hangings as tools to quell protests and stifle public dissent, underscoring growing concerns among human rights organizations over the use of capital punishment.
In September alone, authorities executed at least 68 prisoners - two of which were carried out against protestors sentenced in January - including four women and four political prisoners, and two carried out in public, according to a report by Oslo-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights based on cases it was able to verify utilizing sources on the ground.
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