Iran hangs four ethnic Kurds in Iranian Kurdistan: watchdog
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ÛRMIYÊ, Iranian Kurdistan,— Four ethnic Kurds were hanged by Iran’s judicial authorities in Urmia Central Prison in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) on Tuesday.
Hengaw Organization, which reports on human rights abuses in the Iranian Kurdistan, named the deceased as Hemn Banawand, Mahmoud Khalidi, Jaafar Muhammadi, and Muhammad Aref Najafian.
The court had sentenced them to death for murder, according to Hengaw.
Iran conducted 253 executions in 2018, the most of any country other than China.
Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.
Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.
Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.
Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.
Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | nrttv.com
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