Sumar accuses the Iranian regime of using the war context to intensify internal repression

Eduardo González The Sumar Plurinational Parliamentary Group in Congress has accused the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran of using the war context as “cover to drastically intensify internal repression,” including arbitrary detentions and the use of the death penalty at “unprecedented levels.” In a non-binding motion registered on April 15th by Member of Parliament and former Spanish Ambassador to the UN, Agustín Santos Maraver, for debate in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Sumar (a minority party in Pedro Sánchez's coalition government) asserts that, “since the beginning of the US and Israeli war against Iran on February 28, 2016, the Iranian regime has used the context of war as cover to drastically intensify internal repression.” “In just a few weeks, more than a thousand people have been arrested on charges of espionage, sabotage, or dissent, in a campaign primarily targeting those with ties to the opposition abroad or who are identified as collaborators of the United States or Israel,” the motion continues. According to Sumar, “the scale and pattern of these arrests reveal a deliberate strategy of social control under conditions of war.” “Iranian authorities have arrested more than 170 people accused of collaborating with foreign powers, including 50 for transmitting information about key infrastructure and 123 for allegedly planning acts of sabotage,” the statement asserts. “In addition to these figures, 446 arrests have been made for posting images or videos of military attacks on social media, classified as the crime of disturbing public order.” Furthermore, it warns, “detention conditions have deteriorated drastically.” “Family visits and contact with the outside world have been suspended, medical attention is systematically denied, and basic supplies have been drastically reduced,” and to this is added “the militarization of prisons, with pre-authorized orders to use force against any internal protest, and a significant increase in enforced disappearances, with transfers to secret facilities run by the Revolutionary Guard,” denounces the party led by Vice President Yolanda Díaz. “Prisoners also face immediate physical risk stemming from the war itself: several prisons, including Evin, have been hit by shells or are located near military targets, so the US and Israeli military aggression adds an additional layer of mortal danger to the prison population,” he warns. Furthermore, Sumar denounces that “the rate of executions has reached unprecedented levels.” “According to the report by the Association of Human Rights Activists in Iran, 2,488 people have been executed in the last year, including 63 women and two minors,” he asserts. In addition, “since the beginning of the conflict, the trend has intensified, with at least nine political prisoners executed in just a few days, all on political or state security charges, while no executions for common crimes have been recorded during that period,” he denounces. “This pattern, along with the transfer of at least six inmates to solitary confinement at Qezl-Hesar prison—a measure that in Iranian judicial practice often precedes an imminent execution—points to a deliberate use of the death penalty as an instrument of political repression under the guise of war,” it adds. For all these reasons, the non-binding resolution calls on Pedro Sánchez’s government to urge the Iranian government “to implement an immediate moratorium on the application of the death penalty until internationally recognized legal and procedural guarantees exist, particularly those recognized by the United Nations Human Rights Council.” It also calls on the government to demand “the immediate release of all persons detained for exercising fundamental rights recognized by international law, including freedom of expression and access to information, as well as an end to arbitrary detentions related to the war.”

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