A February 2023 protest in Washington, DC calling for an end to executions and human rights violations in Iran. Photo: Reuters/ Bryan Olin Dozier

The Islamist regime in Iran has ramped up its executions in what one human rights watchdog group described as “an unprecedented increase compared to previous years,” leading observers to raise alarm bells over Tehran’s crackdown on dissent.

Iran has executed 1,286 human beings so far this year through the end of October, according to a new report by the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA).

The organization identified 31 recent executions on murder and drug-related charges, adding, “As of the time of this report, prison authorities and responsible institutions have not publicly announced these executions.”

While most of the executed are accused of murder or drug charges, human rights groups say these charges are often fabricated, conceal the real crime of political opposition, and target minority groups as Baluchis, Kurds, and Arabs.

The Times reported on Sunday that family members of political prisoners on Iran’s death row now wait by their phones in a state of terror and trauma. “Every phone call is a nightmare for me, especially in the morning. It might bring heartbreaking news,” one woman in Tehran told the British paper. “Every night I go to bed with the same dread of what tomorrow may bring.”

The increase in executions — usually carried out by hanging at dawn — have reportedly inspired hunger strikes among prisoners around the country.

One unnamed Iranian activist in exile described to The Times how the executions served as intimidation against those who would resist, saying that “the noose has become the regime’s loudspeaker” and “every hanging is a message: we are still in charge.”

Amnesty International called the increase in killings “state-sanctioned murder on an industrial scale.” Human rights groups have noted the current pace is the highest since 1988, when the regime infamously executed thousands of political prisons, and has already surpassed last year’s total of 1,001.

“Over the past year, as its nuclear program and network of militant proxies have been severely weakened, the regime has become even more reliant on domestic repression,” Shahin Gobadi, of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told The Times.

The inhumane conditions of Iranian prisons also act as a tool to repress those who would speak out for freedom. Those who have escaped describe being packed so tightly into cells that they needed to sleep in shifts under lights that remained on permanently.

On Thursday, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) released a report about Goli Kouhkan, a victim of child marriage who has lived on death row in Iran, scheduled for execution in December.

“Girls are married off at age 13 or even younger, and subjected to decades of beatings and rape, with no real possibility of divorce or escape,” said Bahar Ghandehari, director of advocacy at CHRI. “Many are often killed by family members if they try. Courts must consider these circumstances as mitigating factors when sentencing.”

Ghandehari explained how “the Iranian regime is deeply complicit in these killings because it does not take even the most basic measures to end child marriage or to protect girls and women from domestic abuse — situations that all too often end in death, although it is usually that of the woman.”

Zahra Rahimi co-founded the Imam Ali Popular Students Relief Society and has described the process by which child brides are forced into marriages in Iran.

“The judge will ask questions such as, ‘What is the price of meat? If you want to buy something for your home, what do you buy?’ and based on the girl’s answers, he will determine whether she is ready for marriage,” Rahimi said. “In this process, there is no lawyer, psychologist, doctor, expert, or trusted person to talk to the child … Where the court did not allow marriages to take place [for example, when the girls were under 9 years old], the girls were sent into ‘temporary marriages’ until they turned 13, and then their marriage would become legal.”