- Joined
- May 11, 2013
- Posts
- 24,891
- Reaction score
- 13,616
- Points
- 2,755
- Location
- Morganton, N.C.
- Website
- conversations-ii.freeforums.net
Public Executions in Iran Are Possible Bid To Disorient Protesters - The Media Line
Iran has begun to publicly execute anti-government protesters. […]
themedialine.org
Iran has begun to publicly execute anti-government protesters. The second public execution of a protester took place on Monday morning in the northeast of the country. However, many Iranians believe that this development is a government strategy to cause the Iranian people to stop demanding a complete change in the government and to focus instead on asking for a halt to the executions.
A.S. (a pseudonym), an Iranian activist living in Teheran, told The Media Line that there is a very strong theory widely accepted among Iranians that the government started publicly executing protesters in order to change their focus from dismantling the current government to calling on the government to make the executions stop.
He explains that, in the eyes of the government – which feels that its power is in jeopardy, “if they stop the executions maybe people will give up on changing the government.”
However, he stresses that “what the Iranian people want is the absolute removal of the regime, there is no compromise, there’s no middle ground, this is it.”
The Iranian news agency Mizan, which is associated with the country’s judiciary, reported the second execution and identified the victim as Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, who was publicly hanged from a construction crane in the city of Mashhad. This followed the first public execution of an anti-government demonstrator on Thursday when Mohsen Shekari was hanged in Teheran.
Iranians have been protesting for close to three months, since 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini died in mid-September while in the custody of the morality police, who arrested her in Tehran for not wearing her hijab properly. The government is responding forcefully to the nationwide demonstrations bringing the death toll to at least 458 people, according to a report from an Iranian human rights organization on Wednesday.
Another reason for the executions, says A.S., is to cause fear among the protesters to stop them from attending the demonstrations. However, he said: “It’s not having the effect that the government is hoping for.” “Some people will feel more scared and will be more hesitant to go and protest, but some people would eventually actually become angrier and be more insistent on protesting and striking,” he said, adding that this was the case after the first public execution on Thursday.