“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s already severe restrictions on human rights worsened in a number of areas during” 2024, according to the recently released State Department Report on Human Rights.
The Iranian regime executed hundreds of prisoners, including many who confessed under torture and faced unfair trials. There were new cases of violent enforcement of women’s dress code restrictions. While some political prisoners, including persons detained in connection with protests related to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, were released from prison, other participants in the protests were arrested, sentenced to prison and death, subjected to torture, or executed during 2024. Restrictions on religious freedom were severe during the year.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; unlawful recruitment of children in armed conflict; serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests and prosecutions of journalists, and censorship, among others.
In August 2024, authorities executed Reza Rasaei, who belonged to the Kurdish and Yaresan ethnic and religious minorities, according to IranWire and other media outlets. Following his initial arrest, Rasaei was denied legal counsel and subjected to beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, and sexual violence. He gave a forced confession regarding his supposed participation in the killing of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer.
Members of marginalized ethnic communities, in particular the Baluch minority, were overrepresented among those executed, noted the State Department report. Of the 364 individuals the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center reported that they were executed between January and mid-August 2024, minorities made up 27 percent. Nearly 10 percent of those executed were from the Baluch ethnic group.
The government and its agents harassed, detained, abused, and prosecuted publishers, editors, journalists and members of their families, including those involved in internet-based media, for their reporting on topics considered sensitive by the government.
According to a report by the NGO Defending Free Flow of Information, authorities prosecuted at least 91 journalists from January to March 2024, sentencing 24 to a cumulative 14 years and seven months in prison, with fines totaling more than $15 million.
Although the constitution prohibited all forms of torture “for the purpose of extracting confession or acquiring information,” use of physical and mental torture to coerce confessions was prevalent. Commonly reported methods of torture and abuse in prisons included threats of execution, rape, and sexual assault, among many others.
As President Donald Trump noted on X, “The noble people of Iran - who love America - deserve a government that’s more interested in helping them achieve their dreams than killing them for demanding respect.”
Serious Human Rights Abuses Continue in Iran
Victims of human rights violations in Iran. (File)
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s already severe restrictions on human rights worsened in a number of areas during” 2024, according to the recently released State Department Report on Human Rights.