Majid Tafreshi of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights insists that “Iran’s use of the death penalty for crimes committed as minors does not mean it violates human rights.”
He admitted that Iran executes children “three to four times” a year, but says that since they’re in their late teens, this represents no abuse of human rights.
Tafreshi dismissed the accusations of human rights abuses as propaganda and tried to deflect attention to the U.S., saying that American sanctions on Iran are “barbaric.” Of course, he made no mention of the repeated threats that Iran has made against Israel, or to its adventurism in the region and globally via its proxies.
“Iran says executing child offenders not a rights violation,” AFP, July 1, 2021:
TEHRAN — Iran’s use of the death penalty for crimes committed as minors does not mean it violates human rights, a senior Iranian official has insisted to AFP in response to UN criticism.
The Islamic republic executes convicts for crimes they committed while under-age “three to four times” a year, argued Majid Tafreshi of the state-run High Council for Human Rights.
Such uses of capital punishment are “not a symbol of violations of human rights,” he said in an interview with AFP, charging that criticism of the practice was “not fair”.
“When we are talking about under-18s, we are not talking about six or five years old. We are talking about mainly our 17 years old big boys (where) the court recognised their maturity.”
The United Nations and human rights groups frequently criticise Iran for executing child offenders, which violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that Tehran has ratified.
UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet last week pointed to Iran’s “widespread use of the death penalty” and said that “over 80 child offenders are on death row, with at least four at risk of imminent execution”.
Tafreshi, the council’s deputy head of international affairs, rejected international criticism.
He said the council’s broad goal “is minimising the number of executions… as much as possible”, calling it an effort for which “nobody applauds Iran”.
Iran last year executed at least four people found guilty of murders committed when they were minors, according to the UN….
Tafreshi dismissed as “propaganda” charges by the UN, foreign governments and rights groups that many Iranian detainees are tortured and denied fair trials, adding that any suspected such cases are investigated.
He also pointed to what he labelled Western countries’ own human rights violations, including the United States’ “barbaric sanctions” on Iran, and British and French arms sales to Arab monarchies of the Gulf region.
CogitoErgoSum says
If they have ratified a treaty with the UN accepting that those under 18 are to be considered minors it would seem that the correct thing to do would be to follow the terms of the treaty or to seek a change in the treaty to make 16 or 17 the age of adulthood. Instead they break the treaty 3 or 4 times a year. Shows how much trust anyone can put in making a treaty with Iran.
gravenimage says
Iran signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1991. I have no idea why, except as a fig leaf. Iran mandates that all laws have to be implemented “in an Islamic context”–in other words, abusing children is perfectly Islamic.
somehistory says
Yes, sure, we put kids to death….after we give them a trial by our highest scum, beat them till they confess to slander or for not being mozlum enough; we always say they are guilty of “murder,” and that makes it fair, unlike your criticism of what we do to them; but what is worse than all of what we do is that you guys leave the cap off the toothpaste after squeezing the tube in the middle.
These demonic scum equate what they do to not being allowed to have all of the horrible weapons they want to use on those in other countries who don’t act according to their demands.
gravenimage says
Iran’s High Council for Human Rights says executing child offenders is not a human rights violation
……………………
In Iran raping little children and stoning women to death are not human rights violations, either…
tim gallagher says
These barbaric, completely inhumane Muslims have no concept of human rights. They are evil and totally inhumane and totally uncivilised scum. Human rights are something that people who have made progress and have become reasonably civilised pay attention to. Islam creates monsters who would not recognise the concept of human rights, whether for children or adults, if it came up and bit them on the bum. Islam creates totally unfeeling monsters who don’t have any of the decent , ennobling human emotions that good people have. They kill their own children quite regularly in honour killings, such as the case of the girl lured back to Italy and murdered by her verminous parents reported on here at JIhad Watch recently, so executing minors would fit right in with their very diseased set of evil values.