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Rising executions of ethnic minority activists by Iranian regime a defiant message to the world

It seems Tehran’s nuclear deal with the Western powers has made the brutal regime the winners over the Iranian people, giving it carte blanche in brutality and leaving the already oppressed people the losers, with even the previous veneer of human rights forgotten as the regime unleashes its full savagery.  

The deal disregarded all concerns over human rights in Iran, with this knowing and deliberate negligence on the Western negotiators’ part being translated by the regime into acceptance of its policy of rule by terror and a tacit agreement by the West to give up criticism of the regime’s human rights violations.

The West has effectively given the green light to any and all domestic human rights abuses by the mullahs’ regime, in exchange for which, the West imagines, the regime will give up threatening Western nations’ security.

The regime is taking full advantage of this de facto immunity from human rights legislation granted by Western governments to escalate its already savage domestic repression and brutality against any dissent or peaceful protests calling for freedom and human rights.

The Iranian regime, like the West, knew full well from the start that Obama’s ‘legacy deal’ agreement would give no advantages to the Iranian people, whether economically, politically or in terms of human rights.    Indeed, the deal has empowered the regime, deceptively cloaked by Rouhani’s empty slogans of “reform” to give full rein to its brutality in dealing with outstanding domestic problems such as ethnic minorities demanding human rights.

So far this month alone, the Iranian regime has carried out 30 executions, all of them of members of ethnic minorities – 27 Kurds and three Ahwazi Arabs.  As usual, the accusations against the regime’s victims are baseless and absurd, with its medieval “revolutionary courts”, which are in reality kangaroo courts, issuing politically motivated sentences without providing any evidence against the defendants on charges such as “enmity to God”, usually with no legal representation for the defendants.  As usual, the vast majority of the defendants had no connection to the actions they were accused of, being forced into issuing confessions by brutal torture and threats by regime intelligence officers.

Appeals to Tehran by international human rights organisations urging the regime not to carry out such executions and condemning it for ignoring international laws have been summarily disregarded, with the regime feeling that its immunity means it can flout international laws and obligations towards legislation like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ultimately, however, optimistic one attempts to be concerning Rouhani’s administration and his promises during his presidential campaign, the reality of the regime’s brutal practices against non-Persian social and political activists mean that the situation is largely unchanged since Ahmadinejad’s era, other than a sharp increase in execution figures, with the relentless violence, persecution, and repression against all ethnic minorities continuing without pause or reduction.

In addition, the current spiralling sectarian conflict in the region, fuelled by the Iranian regime and its proxies, means that the regime views non- Persian ethnic minorities in Iran as an even greater threat to its existence than normal.  The regime’s reaction to this perception is to launch ever-more brutal crackdowns on dissidents and treat all domestic dissent or protest as part of a foreign plot and intervention in Iran’s affairs which threaten the regime’s ‘stability.’   As a result,  we will continue to see false allegations by the regime used to justify more executions and more bloodshed against the Ahwazi Arab, Kurdish,  and  Baluchi minorities and against Sunni Muslims and other religious minorities in the country.

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