24 children have already been throttled to death in Iran since 1990 and 71 more are in the list ready to face the execution, if you’re able to read between the lines, do not ask about those executions which generally go unreported. But in a recent report entitled – Iran: The Last Executioner of Children, Human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the practice, and the world seems to watch it haplessly. What else we can do when the fences are too high to cross and spirits too strong to melt down?
Iran is the only country to resort to such horrendous deed this year; it has already executed two child offenders under the age of 18. Surprisingly, and moreover, shockingly, many are kept on death row until they reach 18, of course to be hanged until death. However, Iranian officials have denied all the allegations.
Amnesty’s call to halt all minor executions and amend present laws that allows death sentence for minors who commit crimes will definitely not persuade hell-bent Iran.
According to Clarisa Bencomo, children’s rights researcher on the Middle East at Human Rights Watch:
Iran holds the deplorable distinction of leading the world in juvenile executions, and the authorities should end this practice at once. The Iranian government needs to stop sending children to the gallows and start living up to its international obligations by issuing clear legislation to ban the juvenile death penalty.
The fact that most of the child offenders are tried in adult courts rather than a juvenile court and the torturous conditions, in which children are forced to confess, make the issue more disturbing. Ironically, Iran’s deliberate incompetency has flayed a tight slap, despite its rectification, on the two core international human rights treaties – the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18.
The scenario is worse in case of girl child offenders. In Iran, where Sharia or the Islamic Law, rules, a women cannot be executed if she is a virgin and hence permits legal rape.
Children?
Actually, children are not at all considered as children in Iran; rather, they’re taken as followers of Islamic laws ready to take on the masts of the revolution. There are no excuses, you’re born and you’re doomed, that’s all, no more questions.
Many other human rights issues in Iran play a major role in shaping and armoring a child’s psychology with weapons of hypocrisy. However, perhaps, the world is not qualified and equipped enough to do anything in this regard – lest issuing reports – we hope this is not the first time you’re confronting the issue on the wall in tatters with a few loose bricks holding to hollow faith.
Kill people, kill crime?
The mentally immature children here can’t be held responsible when the moment they break the cocoon, they’re taught that killing people is alright and it becomes easily acceptable to the whole new breed of murderers in the making. The notion that killing people will kill the crime has never proved fruitful anywhere in the world.
If Iranian judiciary is killing innocent children for murder, adultery, and homosexuality, we doubt the adulthood of the harbingers of law either. Iran’s tragic isolation is giving birth to a whole new sick generation, which is apparently calling all of us to act fast and reach out.
Yes, we used to kill black people for being black, however, have come of age. We hope that Iran, whose identity as a nation too is still doubtful, too might see the light soon. Past defines present; however, Iran must not forget that its present will define its future too. To bring a positive change, a nation needs majority of people on the side of the new revolution; however, it’s a pity that Iranians are too proud to smell the winds – (they understand the language of the storm too well).
Image Credit: Dissident Voice (Two Iranian boys hanged in 2005 for having consensual sex)
