Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the subcommittee, for your persistent attention to the human rights situation in Iran and for allowing us to testify at a time when we are witnessing a serious human rights crisis in Iran.
I would like to draw your attention today to two issues that are related and are causing serious concerns among human rights activists. The first issue is the death penalty, the judicial process leading to the death penalty, and related topics such as criminality. The second issue is activism in Iran and the situation of rights defenders. The choice of this talk is linked to current events in Iran, but also to observations resulting from many years of research.
As you just heard, in the month of January 2011, close to 100 individuals were reportedly executed in Iran, and approximately 70% of the convicted prisoners were sentenced for drug-related offences. This number is a record high in many years in a country that has consistently had one of the highest rates of executions per capita in the world. What makes it crucial for us to reflect on this issue is not only the cruelty of the death penalty and its failure in terms of eradicating criminality, but also the fact that those who are prosecuted as common criminals are often among the most vulnerable in Iranian society.
Poverty, the absence of formal education, as well as a lack of serious attention by the media and civil society to their cases weaken their ability to defend themselves. Also, the process leading to executions is marked by violations, such as the denial of the right to defence, and torture. The use of coerced confession in trials is routine. There is a persistent trend in the Islamic Republic that encourages arbitrary arrests, speedy processes, and summary trials, and views defence attorneys as obstacles to the enforcement of justice.
Finally, the institutionalization of violence against ordinary Iranians and the establishment and persistence of flawed judicial processes facilitate the attack on activists and protestors in general, when the need arises. It happened, for example, in the Kahrizak detention centre in 2009. Today several political prisoners are on death row, with a process that is very opaque and with charges that are very difficult to prove.
If you don't mind, ladies and gentlemen, as a historian, I will take you back 30 years and look at the history of the death penalty in Iran, with particular focus on the death penalty for drug dealing and drug addiction.
Judicial authorities in Iran, like their counterparts in China, do not publish numbers and do not allow independent monitoring of cases involving the death penalty. The Islamic Republic's authorities deliberately withhold information on executions. I can refer to, for example, Ayatollah Fazil, the head of the Shiraz courts, who noted a couple of years ago that since it's inappropriate to make daily statements to the public about executions and to provide detailed information regarding the cases, court officials prefer that not all of them be reported.
Based on data available, mostly through official reports, the number of executions in Iran is revealing. In 2007 we collected reports of 468 executions, 189 of which were drug-related. In 2009 we collected reports of 408 executions, 171 of which were drug-related. In 2010 there were--