“The appalling spectacle of these killings marks a turning point in repression”

JOn Thursday, December 8, 2022 at dawn, a 23-year-old Iranian boy, Mohsen Shekari, was executed in Tehran. He was arrested on September 25 during anti-regime protests that have engulfed Iran since the death of Mahsa Jina Amini. Eight weeks later, he was sentenced to death for “War Against God” (moharebeh) and hanged. His family wanted to appeal his sentence.

The images broadcast by Iranian television of his trial, held without a lawyer behind closed doors, show his astonished gaze which cries out injustice, and which will never leave us. This look, which takes us to witness the nightmare, is also that of Majidreza Rahnavard, executed in Mashad on December 12, and of Mahan Sadrat Madani now awaiting execution, as well as eleven other demonstrators sentenced to death by the revolutionary court, including the artist and theater actor Hossein Mohammadi.

This body, illegal according to the very laws of the Islamic Republic, as lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh reminds us, operates according to a procedure and charges (“War Against God”, “corruption on earth”) that are an insult to humanity. Lawyers who showed up to defend the demonstrators were arrested and held incommunicado. Court-appointed lawyers relay violence and instructions to the court.

The Iranian state against its own population

Fifty-five demonstrators, including three minors, are on trial and are currently facing the death penalty. Among them, the rapper Toumaj Salehi, a figure of resistance and commitment, but also Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlou, a doctor accused of the death of a militiaman to whom he was helping. Faced with this new terror, in the streets and online, Iranian women do not lower their heads, but unite in a slogan: “Behind each one of us who dies, beat a thousand other hearts”

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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and several regime figures have praised the judicial authorities for their diligence. The appalling spectacle of these killings marks a turning point in repression. The Iranian people have taken to the streets to demand regime change, and have refused to leave for three months.

Faced with this unprecedented revolutionary movement, the Iranian state has engaged in a war against its own population (cities in Kurdistan are literally under siege). It also lends its support in other murderous wars as shown by the use by the Russians of Iranian drones in the destruction of civilian life in Ukraine.

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source site-29