Iran Human Rights Monitor has published its report on human rights abuses in February 2021 and, as always, it makes for uncomfortable reading with a heavy focus on executions, arbitrary killings, torture, and a violent crackdown on dissent.

This will be a short overview, but a more extensive look is available here.

Executions

The Iranian regime executed at least 34 people last month, including a woman and four political prisoners.

Bizarrely, the woman who was due to be executed, actually died from a heart attack after watching other executions and the authorities still strung her lifeless body up in a noose, according to her lawyer. Zahra Esma’ili was only on death row because she took the blame for the murder of her abusive husband, who was a regime member, to save her teenage daughter from the noose.

While the Arab Ahvazi political prisoners – Jasem Heidari, Ali Khosraji, Hossein Silavi, and Naser Khafajin – were executed just minutes after their final family visit following a hunger strike over their mistreatment by the regime and the denial of family visits.

Crackdown on Protests

Some 40 Baluch fuel traders were killed by the regime and 100 injured after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) cracked down on a protest outside their base in Saravan, Sistan and Baluchistan.

The protest began after the IRGC closed the Iran-Pakistan border, leaving the traders unable to complete their job and short of food and water. Following the shootings, the regime shut off the internet to stop news from spreading, but this failed and protests continued for a week across the protest.

Amnesty International called for “urgent, independent criminal investigations” into the killings of unarmed people that demonstrated “a callous disregard for human life” by security forces.

Abuse of prisoners

• Behnam Mahjoubi, a member of the Gonabadi Dervish religious minority, died on February 21, mere days after being given a large amount of unknown drugs in Evin Prison infirmary because there was no doctor about. The peaceful protesters have been denied appropriate medical care since he got to prison and was subjected too much ill-treatment.
• Mehrdad Taleshi, a Kurdish man who was arrested on suspicion of carrying drugs, was killed under torture at the Shapour Police Station on February 1, with evidence on his head and neck showing torture and beatings.
• Hadi Rostami was flogged 60 times on February 14 for “disrupting prison order” over his suicide attempts and hunger strikes, and is still set to have his finger amputated.
• Fariborz Kalantari, an Iranian journalist, was sentenced to 74 lashes, as well as three years in prison and a fine, after being charged with “insulting” regime affiliate Mehdi Jahangiri by writing an article about his  financial corruption.