CIVICUS speaks about the ongoing wave of executions in Iran with Asal Abasian, an Iranian journalist and queer feminist activist. After receiving serious threats, Asal fled Iran for Turkey in 2021. They’re currently based in Paris, France.
How has repression escalated since the 2022 protests?
Repression by the regime of the Islamic Republic has escalated with executions of protesters, aimed at creating fear to suppress any attempt at new mobilisations such as the Woman, Life, Freedom nationwide protests triggered by Mahsa Amini’s death.
Recently, four young Kurds from the western provinces of Iran were hanged on unproven charges of cooperation with the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan. Their families demanded a pardon until the last moment, but their requests went unheard.
The Islamic Republic has always been at odds with ethnic minorities. Forty-five years since the Islamic Revolution, this conflict is as alive as on the first day. If anything, it has become worse.
Of course, the death threat that comes with ramping up executions is not directed only at ethnic minorities. Every excluded group in Iran is under threat. The regime founded after the 1979 Islamic revolution was grounded on the aim of protecting the interests of Shia Muslim men. This means that everyone except Shia Muslim men is oppressed by design. This includes all women and LGBTQI+ people and sexual minorities, children and religious and ethnic minorities.
Throughout 45 years there have been several spikes in executions of people from minority groups as well as political activists opposing the Islamic Republic. This trend has been ongoing from the onset, and it was even worse at the beginning. In the first decade of the Islamic Republic thousands of young dissidents were secretly executed or shot.
On top of this, ethnic and religious minorities such as Bahais, Balochs, Kurds and Sunni Arabs experience daily discrimination and marginalisation, which sometimes cost people their lives.
Additionally, the regime of the Islamic Republic supports Hamas and other terrorist Islamic groups and has no qualms about it. It laments the killing of children in Gaza while it has killed so many during the protests that erupted in Iran in September 2022. But ideologies shouldn’t matter: the massacre of children by any regime or group is a despicable act.
Is there any space for civil society to operate in Iran?
Young people in Iran continue resisting, despite the severe economic pressure and the suppression of activism. Even if this involves making sacrifices in their careers, education or social lives, young women continue defying the mandatory hijab. Nationwide protests may have decreased, but young people continue resisting the arbitrary and inhumane laws of the Islamic Republic.
The struggle continues under the surface. Although the Islamic Republic and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps severely suppress any attempt at a protest, people have not stopped fighting. The fact that they continue embracing civil resistance despite the potentially serious costs is very encouraging.
Many of our fighters, whom I would like to mention, are in Tehran’s Evin prison with long sentences. Sarvenaz Ahmadi, Anisha Asadollahi, Keyvan Mohtadi, Sepideh Rashnu, Nasim Soltanbeygi and many others are in the frontlines of this struggle, spending the years of their youth in prison. And what cost would be higher than paying with years of your life?
I try to support their struggle by raising awareness on international platforms and amplifying their voices. But the main struggle is being carried on by young Iranians in Iran. From afar, we can only admire their struggles and broadcast them to the world.
How has the international community reacted to the escalation of repression in Iran?
Unfortunately, the international community has maintained a shameful silence and indifference. As people were being executed, the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Narges Mohammadi, and several other civil activists wrote to the United Nations (UN) on the human rights crisis that Iranians face. And still, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif recently travelled to Iran despite activists warning that this could be used as propaganda by the government.
The Iranian people will not forget the indifference and self-interest of the international community. This is as much of a historical disgrace as the silence in the face of the crimes that are being committed in Gaza.
Many members of the international community are perhaps more involved in domestic and regional interests, and it seems that, contrary to their proclaimed slogans, they are not really concerned about genocide, the killing of children and people’s oppression. This is very unfortunate.
We neither forgive nor forget.
Civic space in Iran is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
