Iran continues its violations against Sunnis, executes 7 in Kurdistan

Ali Ragab

Despite Iran’s calls for Islamic unity, rapprochement between sects and its claim to reject intolerance and Sunni-Shiite conflict, the conditions of the Sunnis in many areas within Iranian geography face severe repression and widespread violations by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s regime.

Execution after 10 years

The HRAI organization for human rights in Iran stated that the Supreme Court in Iran supported the execution of 7 prisoners after nearly 10 years of imprisonment in Rajai Shahr prison, in the western city of Karaj, in Tehran Province.

The Supreme Court of Iran has ordered the execution of Anwar Khazri, Kamran Sheikha, Farhad Salimi, Qasim Abastieh, Khusro Bisharat, Ayoub Karimi, Dawood Abdullah, noting that the verdict was communicated to the defense attorney for the seven prisoners.

“Mahmoud Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei,” a lawyer for the defense of the defendants in the assassination file of “Mamusta Abdul Rahim Tina”, the preacher of the mosque of the “Caliphs of Righteousness” in the city of Mahabad (Iranian Kurdistan), said that these defendants are currently awaiting the date of the trial by the 15th Division of the so-called Islamic Revolution Court.

10 million Kurds in Iran

Numerous estimates indicate that the Sunnis will not be less than (30%) of the total population of what is known as the geography of Iran, and that their number is not less than (25,000,000) people out of (78,000,000) people who are Iranians.

The Kurdish people constitute about half of the Sunnis in Iran, as more than 10,000,000 Kurds live in Iran. It is known that 98 percent of the Kurdish people are Muslim, and that 95 percent of them are Sunnis.

For example, the Iranian authorities executed 25 Sunni Kurds in 2016, and the families of the victims indicated that they were subjected to brutal and barbaric methods before their execution, and among the poor was Hassan Amini, director of the Imam Bukhari School of Religious Sciences in Sanandaj.

Al-Ahwaz also witnessed widespread executions during 2016, on charges of terrorism, fighting God, His Messenger, and corruption on earth.

Brian Hook, the US Special Representative for Iran, criticized the Iranian authorities’ continued suppression and persecution of religious minorities, referring to the arbitrary arrest, torture and killing of many Sunni Muslim citizens.

“Every day in Iran, men and women suffer many unspeakable misfortunes because of their religious beliefs,” Hook said, in a speech to him at a session at the International Conference on Freedom of Religion in November 2018.

According to the Persian page of the U.S. State Department website, the United States Special Representative for Iran has affirmed that Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, and Sufi dervishes are specifically “targeted by this regime.”

“Sunni Muslims are also subject to government repression, including arbitrary killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture in custody,” Hook said. He added, “They are permanently denied the freedom to worship, especially in Tehran.”

Hook said these conditions demonstrate the “disgusting hypocrisy of Iranian government leaders who see themselves as the bearers of the banner of Islam.”

These criticisms of Iran come after the succession of reports by international organizations and human rights defenders on the violation of freedom of religion and doctrines in Iran, the most recent of which was the report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, this month, in which he criticized the Tehran government for the suppression of religious minorities.

In another part of his speech, Brian Hook criticized the Iranian regime for continuing to spend money for foreign military interventions at the expense of the Iranian people, saying that “while billions are spent on foreign adventures, public services are declining sharply.”