Alive, temporarily. Iran’s Supreme Court decided on Wednesday to suspend the application of the death sentence handed down by the mullahs’ regime against a 19-year-old young protester, in the country still grappling with a wave of popular uprising, 120 days after the death of young Mahsa Amini.
The 22-year-old died at the hands of Tehran vice police last September after being arrested for ‘wearing inappropriate clothes’, sparking an unprecedented opposition movement calling for the fall of Tehran’s theocratic regime .
The sentence of Mohammad Boroghani, accused of “wounding a security guard with a knife with intent to kill him”, was due to be carried out this week, just days after the hanging of two other young protesters. His lawyer called for “a re-examination of the legal proceedings for his client”, according to the Mizan Online news agency, and this, in confrontation with a regime which, overwhelmed by persistent popular opposition, now seems to rely on the sentence capital — especially in the face of its youth — to silence the cries of freedom coming from the streets.
“This practice testifies to the fragility of the regime in its attempt to contain the protest movement, whose degree of mobilization and intensity in terms of participation in the demonstrations are remarkable”, said in an interview the political scientist Nermin Allam, of the Rutgers University, which scrutinizes Iranian social movements. “This opposition has grown increasingly out of control as it spread beyond the women’s groups that spearheaded it. »
“The mullahs’ regime hopes that these executions will serve to dissuade the Iranians from questioning its legitimacy and its power”, summarizes Hussein Banai, specialist in Iranian politics, joined by The duty at Indiana University, USA. “The problem is that the arbitrary sham trials through which he conveys these execution orders risk further angering Iranians and thereby strengthening their opposition to the regime. »
On Monday, Tehran announced the cwedamnation to death of three new protesters, bringing to nearly 43 the number of opponents of the regime exposed to the death penalty since the beginning of the popular uprising, according to a recent count made by the American network CNN. Javad Rouhi – he is one of the three – is exposed to the death penalty for “corruption on Earth”, for “apostasy by desecration of the Koran by burning it”, for “destruction and burning of public property”, but also for having been “the leader of a group of rioters” in Noshahr, in the north of the country.
Iranian activist group 1500Tasvir speaks for its part of 100 people arbitrarily executed by the regime or about to be, a count that raises an outcry in the international community.
This practice testifies to the fragility of the regime in its attempt to contain the protest movement
On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, described as “state murders” these executions orchestrated by Tehran targeting opponents of the regime. He denounced this exploitation of hanging to “punish people who exercise their basic rights” to participate or organize demonstrations, he said in a statement from Geneva.
“I once again reiterate my call on the Iranian government to respect the lives and voices of its people, impose an immediate moratorium on the death penalty and end all executions,” did he declare.
Humanize losses
Since the beginning of the uprising, nearly 750 people have lost their lives in Iran as a result of executions, torture during interrogations or falling under the bullets of security forces during demonstrations organized across the country, according to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), one of the components of the opposition to the mullahs’ regime, currently in exile, which maintains a list of the names of these “martyrs”.
“The regime realizes that all it has to try to stop these protests is force and repression,” said former Privy Council Office security adviser Peter Jones, who leads the think tank Ottawa Dialogue. “It’s a strategy that may work for a while to chase protesters from the streets, but it’s also a repressive framework that nullifies any hope the regime has of presenting itself to the world as the legitimate representatives of the will of the Iranian people. Of course, for the extremists currently running the regime, there is probably little remorse in taking these steps. But the Iranian system has always tried to present itself as following the expression of the will of the Iranians. Which no longer seems to be the case today, according to him.
This discrepancy between the repression of the regime and the aspirations of the demonstrators, carried by the voice of a youth increasingly determined to put an end to the dictatorship and religious tyranny, has caused Iranian power to waver for nearly four months without yet foreshadow the moment of his downfall.
“I tend to believe that an authoritarian and brutal regime like that of the Islamic Republic will fight until the end to stay alive, and that will probably last for some time,” predicts Hussein Banai.
“Sooner or later, when it becomes clear that the only way for them to stay in power is through brutality, elements of this regime will break away from it to join the people,” says Peter Jones. “But unfortunately we cannot know how long it will take. Nor, above all, how many people will still have to suffer by then. »
With Agence France-Presse