Photo credit: Flickr user kattebelletje
As the world marked World Day Against the Death Penalty this weekend, Iranian officials announced that three protesters arrested in the country’s post-election crackdown have been sentenced to death. The verdicts were announced despite widespread international outcry over the sentencing of another protester, Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, to death last week. Saturday’s announcement came the same day that Iran, in blatant violation of international law, hanged a man who was 17 when he committed a murder.
With a tally of at least 346 executions in 2008, Iran carried out more executions than any other country in the world besides China. Eight of these were juvenile offenders, according to Amnesty International, making Iran the only country in the world in which juvenile offenders were known to be executed (the United States, which occupied fifth place in the number of executions carried out in 2008, abolished the death penalty for juveniles in 2005). Meanwhile, China, the globe’s “first place” executioner with least 1,718 in 2008, sentenced six men to death on Monday for murder, arson, and robbery during the July 2009 ethnic riots in Xinjiang. In both of these countries, exact figures of the number of executions are not publicly available.
Although both countries log significantly higher-than-average capital punishment figures, governmental attitudes toward and application of the death penalty in the two countries differ notably.
Cloaked in a language of morality, capital punishment in Iran is used by the government to prevent threats to the legitimacy of the country’s religion-based political system. In other words, the government conflates threats to the religious order with threats to the political order. Under Islamic law as applied in the country, a gamut of crimes is punishable by death. Homicide, rape, incest, homosexuality, adultery, and prostitution are capital offenses. Execution sentences are sometimes given out for drug-related crimes. The protesters sentenced to death last week were charged with mohareb, or “taking up arms against God.”According to Amnesty International, a 2008 law widened the scope of capital crime in Iran to include pornography, and officials were proposing laws to include apostasy, heresy and witchcraft, as well as internet crimes that “promote corruption and apostasy” on the list of capital offenses.
In the case of murder, the family of the victim determines whether the person who committed the murder will face death or pay compensation – literally “blood money” – to the family. This allows the state to take a hands-off approach in determining the fate of those convicted of murder. In the case of Behnoud Shojaie, the young man who was executed this week for a murder he committed at age 17, the state responded to cries from the United Nations by noting that Iranian officials were “doing their utmost” to get the victim’s family to accept the blood money. Though Navi Pillay, the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the organization welcomes attempts to mediate between the family of the victim and the person convicted of the murder, such actions were “utterly insufficient” in satisfying Iran’s international law commitments.
In China, capital punishment is a way of combating disruptions of social and political, rather than moral, order. Its Communist secular law provides for perhaps an even wider range of capital offenses. Homicide, rape, and kidnapping are all punishable by death, as are non-violent crimes such financial fraud, smuggling weapons and precious metals, and counterfeiting currency. Unlike Iran, China prohibits the execution of a person who committed his or her crime before the age of 18. The widespread utilization of capital punishment in China is the continuation of the “strike hard” campaigns used to suppress criminality following the breakdown of social order during the Cultural Revolution. As discussed in the 2007 Countries at the Crossroads report, these campaigns are characterized by the rounding up and severe punishing of large numbers of people, especially young people, often through mass trials and executions.
Despite these differences, the justice systems are similar in failing to provide fair trials for those charged with capital crimes. These countries apply the rule of law unevenly. The Iranian court system is pervasively politicized. There is limited adherence to constitutional guarantees including freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right of access to competent courts, and the right to select an attorney or be provided with legal counsel. Lawyers who defend criminals accused of political crimes are at risk of finding themselves accused of acting against national security.
In China, the judiciary has almost no independence or autonomy from the Chinese Communist Party, and all courts are answerable to the National People’s Congress. Judicial officials are poorly trained. Suspects are not presumed innocent until proven guilty and many confessions are extracted through torture. As in Iran, defense lawyers are often treated as accomplices to suspects.
Barring any extreme political development, it is unlikely that these countries’ judicial systems will undergo significant reform or that the application of the death penalty will be narrowed. This raises concerns for both future and immediate developments. Though death sentences in Iran may be appealed to the Supreme Court, the recent protest-related convictions evoked fears about the fates of other protesters held in prison after this summer’s post-election crackdown. Apparently 18 other protesters received sentences last week, though these sentences have not yet been made public. According to the Guardian, there were more than 4,000 people arrested for their involvement in this summer’s protests, about 200 of whom are still imprisoned. Last week, Amnesty International called for Iran to lift the death penalty on Zamani, labeling the prosecution a “show trial” and a “mockery of justice.”
Given the eminently political nature of these sentences, and the tense political climate in Tehran following June’s elections, the Iranian government may be courting a public backlash. This is unlikely in China, as the public, scarred by memories of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, generally supports harsh measures to keep social order under control. In the end, it is probably impossible to know if such common use of the death penalty functions as the authorities intend, as a deterrent to both crime and challenges to the established order. It is clear, however, that the shadowy process that leads to the firing squad or gallows in each country symbolizes the meagerness of individual rights in these authoritarian states.