Few days ago the official spokesman of the Islamic Republic’s judiciary reported a directive banning any further execution in public has been issued by the head of the judiciary. The said directive also disallows any further dissemination of pictures of hangings by Iranian mass media except in cases that exclusive exceptions are made by the judiciary.
Interested observers who are seasoned in the IRI’s public announcements have come to expect denials and clarifications on the heel of most officially announced declarations. And since it has been a few days and none has been made it should be safe to opine on repercussion of the judiciary’s latest directive.
As a background it should be noted the same judiciary officially announced the ìsuspensionî of the stoning. For the uninitiated, stoning is a form of Capital punishment in which the condemned is literally planted in a shallow hole and bombarded to death by stones of officially proscribed size. It should further be noted that the said ìsuspensionî was overlooked in at least two officially reported cases.
The local judge in Ghazvin province pointedly told a reporter that his authority for issuing and carrying out the stoning comes directly from God as described in the Holy Koran and cannot be superseded by any fallible human being. With that background in mind one can somewhat assuredly make number of predictions, most of which are to the detriment of the already atrocious human rights record of the Islamic Republic.
1- Assuming the latest directive is indeed followed by the local judges even in far-flung areas out of the sight of the already muzzled, to the point of jaw wired shut press; it does not translate to a stop in the practice. It simply means a return to the good old halcyon days of simultaneously talking Kant and meting out the Dark Age punishments by the IRI’s officials and finding eager takers in European business circles and beyond.
2- Along with the current international focus on the Islamic Republic’s atomic activity has come a newfound interest in the human rights, or to be more accurate, the lack of such in the IRI. True the interest in Human rights by powers to be is not as ultraistic as hoped for and as usual is just one of many tools to apply pressure to achieve an unrelated desired outcome. And yet even as such it is welcomed since it might, just might save a life or a limb or two or even lessen the number of lashes that a victim has to endure. By conducting public executions, the IRI was strengthening this aspect of pressure against itself; by taking it once again behind closed doors it lessens it.
3- The public opinion in the Western Democracies, as finicky as they are, was beginning to shift away from being wholly consumed by the atrocities committed in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay prisons to the IRI. The officially published pictures and videos of mobile gallows on major intersections of Iranian cities, towns and villages were jarring too many consciences, even the uninterested ones, for their respective governments to ignore. Ergo it was making it even harder than before for the Western governments, UN sanctions and all, to justify allowing businesses to continue dealings with IRI unmolested.
4- The ebb and flow in interest in human rights has had a devastating effect on its application as an inalienable, nonnegotiable post enlightenment value. When verified systematic abusers are forgiven as soon as they agree to play ball minus their human rights practices, as in the case of Libya, it sends a loud message to other abusing regimes that they too can apply for and be granted a card blanche. This directive of IRI judiciary breathes new life into those who were hard pressed justify coming to terms with the regime.
5- Records are kept not for the sake of record keeping; rather they have a utilitarian value. And as such believing in IRI declarations has a direct correlation to one’s gullibility coefficient.
And finally, the Achilles’ heel of the IRI is its human rights practices; relegating it to playing second fiddle is as misguided as thinking by having full uninhibited diplomatic and commercial ties or a missile attack will change the nature of the regime.
All those who are buying into the argument of human rights within the cultural values and norms of a given society which translates to what we have right now in IRI-need to try to justify all past abhorrent systems which at one time or another were billed as culturally mandated including fascism, apartheid and slavery. Insistence on the universal application of human rights, bar none, says a lot about the insister’s integrity.
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