stop execution of mothers in Iran

 By Arash Nikzad

In our modern civilization women are considered as a major part of our society everywhere from South Africa to Finland and from Australia to chilly But in Iran, they considered as the second-degree citizen and the government as a misogynic regime denied their right as the human being and instituted unhuman punishment against them in its laws.

 According to the Iranian media, Iran is the world’s leading per capita executioner. It also holds the record in the execution of women even pregnant and teenagers.

The Iranian regime is among those regimes that execute their opponents, to survive the regime from overthrow. 120,000 people including engineers, medicines, and university students have been executed in Iran since 1981 for their opposition to the government, at-least one-third of whom have been women. According to the international laws and the religious belief, pregnant women must not be executed under any circumstances, whereas in Iran many pregnant women and teenager girls have been executed in the 1980s. Women were also executed in masse in 1988, during the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran.

The Iranian regime uses execution as a tool to suppress and silence the dissatisfied people the majority of whom live under the poverty line, are unemployed and deprived of freedom of expression.

Execution is a tool which helps the mullahs’ regime hold its grab on power. Over 3,200 people have been executed over the past four years under Hassan Rouhani. In the same period, 81 women have been executed, ten since January 2017.

Among the reasons that lead to the execution of women are early forced marriages, poverty lack of any support by the government a.nd the domestic institutional violence against women in the laws and Iranian constitution, and poverty.

The international law recommends alternative punishments for the imprisonment of women who are mothers and responsible for the training of new generations and have to take care of their children. In Iran, however, mothers are not only imprisoned but handed death sentences, as the victims of a cruel government.

Most women do not report violence and rape because judicial authorities might hold the woman, the victim, guilty and accuse her of illicit relations which is punishable by death according to their interpret the laws.

On the World Day against the Death Penalty, we draw attention to the plight of women in Iran who are victims of execution and urge the international community to pressure the Iranian regime to halt the death penalty in general, and especially against mothers