Iran’s Human Rights Violations
From Stand for Freedom in Iran:
So far this year there have been 322 executions, almost as many as the whole of last year, when 381 Iranians were executed.
There is no freedom in religion in Iran, as evidenced by the continuing persecution of the Baha’i faith. Recently, seven Baha’is were arrested on charges of spying for Israel. According to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, “these individuals were detained solely on the basis of their faith.” These individuals have also not been given their right to due process.
All national and local Bahá'í administrative institutions have been banned by the Government, and Bahá'í holy places, cemeteries and community properties have been confiscated, vandalized, or destroyed. Link here.
The Iranian authorities are using prolonged harsh interrogations, beatings, sleep deprivation, and threats of torture to extract false confessions from detainees arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election, according to Human Rights Watch. Link here.
The sentencing of four Tehran bloggers by Iran's Judiciary Court on February 3, 2009, to prison terms, fines and flogging, despite the head of the judiciary's admission that they had been coerced into confessing, violates their right to a fair trial, as well as freedom of the press, according to Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Link here.
In Iran, same sex sexual acts between consenting adults are crimes. Since 1979, thousands of Iranians have been intimidated, harassed in their own homes, arrested, tortured, subjected to cruel corporal punishment, and executed. Link here.
Iran is one of the only countries left in the world today that still executes children and child offenders (those accused of committing an offense when they were under 18 years of age). At least 137 juvenile offenders face execution, but the total number could be much higher as many death penalty cases in Iran are believed to go unreported. Iran is known to have executed at least 17 juvenile offenders since the beginning of 2004 – eight times more than any other country in the world. Link here.
"Iran is one of the only countries left in the world today that still executes children and child offenders (those accused of committing an offense when they were under 18 years of age)."
I understand your point and certainly Iran has to be denounced over and over for its many human rights abuses. And lots of kudos to people demonstrating in NY today. But there is an elephant in the room here.
The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled a few years back that it was acceptable for us to execute children who committed crimes when they were 16 or 17. (Stanford v. Kentucky and Wilkins v. Missouri, 1989: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the death penalty is not prohibited under the Eighth Amendment for those who committed their crimes at ages 16 or 17.) Over the last 30 years, there have been hundreds of such executions. As far as I have heard, this is still the law today.