NEW YORK—The king Cyrus the Great, following his conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C., issued the Cyrus Cylinder, which today is widely recognized as the first document defining a person's human rights, thus making Iran home to the first charter of human rights. History would prove later how paradoxical this act would become.
Last November, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Iran to end human rights violations in the country. The resolution, which also asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to submit a progress report in 2008, underscores the need for the government of Iran to adhere to international human rights norms and put an end to practices such as the death penalty for child offenders that tarnish its image as a civilized nation.
Human rights violations in Iran can take several forms, from the imprisonment of journalists and members of the opposition to hangings and amputations of convicted criminals or the stoning of women accused of adultery. Although they are all serious violations of human rights, a particularly cruel practice is the death sentence of minors.
According to the Agence France-Presse, 298 people (both adults and minors) were hanged in 2007 a substantial increase over the 177 hangings in 2006. Publicly disclosed executions for 2008 already number 23. Iran has presently one of the highest numbers of recorded executions of any country in the world.
Today, Iran is one of the few countries in the world that still executes children and child offenders (those accused of committing an offense when they were under 18 years of age).
According to Amnesty International in its report "Iran: The last executioner of children," "Although executions of child offenders are few compared to the total number of executions in Iran, they highlight the government's disregard for its commitments and obligations under international law, which prohibits in all circumstances the use of the death penalty for child offenders."
By sentencing child offenders to death, Iran is violating two treaties to which it is signatory, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The ICCPR establishes in its Article 6 that "Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."
The CRC, in its Article 37, provides that "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without the possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age."
The Iranian government is also violating customary international law, since excluding child offenders from the death penalty is now so widely accepted in practice that it has become a rule of customary law and, as such, binding on every state. That situation has been confirmed by the UN Human Rights Committee.
Iranian government officials have repeatedly stated that children are not executed in Iran, even though it is widely known that minors below 18 have been executed. That in some cases the authorities wait until the child offenders have turned 18 to execute them doesn't change the character of Iran's abuse of international law and obligations.
Equally reprehensible is the issue of amputations. In several cases in Iran, amputations take on an especially cruel character, since they involve both the right hand and the left foot of those amputated, making it particularly impossible for them to walk even with a cane or crutches.
Ms. Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has strongly condemned the executions and amputations being carried out in Iran, and stated that violations of human rights in the country have reached new dimensions. She has also stressed that these violations of human rights contravene human rights conventions that Iran has signed. Amnesty International calls amputations a "cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment."
The Iranian government has been keen in obtaining international recognition and respect. A basic condition for them is to follow international rules of civilized behavior that both executions of minors and cruel amputations clearly violate.
Iranian authorities should implement an immediate moratorium on all executions of those under 18 at the time of their crime with a view to a later abolition of the death penalty in the country. They should also eliminate the barbaric practice of amputation.
Cesar Chelala, a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award, is the foreign correspondent for the Middle East Times International (Australia).
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