INU- Maryam Rajavi*, the leader of the Iranian Resistance, supports the abolition of the death penalty in Iran for all crimes; rightly recognising that it is neither an effective deterrent nor punishment.
In fact, Maryam Rajavi has enshrined her commitment to end this brutal, archaic sentence in the ten-point plan for a Free Iran, which is set to be implemented once the mullahs fall and Maryam Rajavi takes over for the six-month transitional period.
But why does Maryam Rajavi oppose the death penalty and think that it should be condemned to the ash heap of history?
Well, first off, Maryam Rajavi sees that most democracies have either abolished the death penalty all together or limit it to the most serious cases (i.e. murder).
The mullahs in Iran use it frequently. According to Amnesty International, the Iranian Regime carried out 507 executions last year, under supposed moderate Hassan Rouhani, although Maryam Rajavi noted in a speech on the International Day Against the Death Penalty that the true number is much higher because of the secrecy that enshrines the Regime.
In fact, Iran is widely known as the world’s leading executioner by capita.
Maryam Rajavi said: “The death penalty is a tool for terrorizing the society and a significant instrument for preserving the regime. Both factions benefit from such endless savagery to prolong the regime’s rule.”
The main targets of the Regime by sheer number alone are non-violent offenders, juveniles, and political prisoners. In fact, 120,000 members of the Iranian Resistance have been executed since the Regime took power, with the 1988 massacre taking the lives of 30,000 political prisoners in just one summer.
Secondly, Maryam Rajavi notes that the Regime uses the death penalty largely against the people fighting for freedom in Iran; the people who support Maryam Rajavi and her quest for a free Iran. They also executed at least two of her siblings for political activism.
Maryam Rajavi urged the Iranian people to stand up against the executions and prevent the mullahs from using this oppressive sentence via any means. She also called on international governments to make their economic and political relations with Iran conditional on an end to executions.
Maryam Rajavi said: “Thousands upon thousands of Iranians have been sent, one by one, to the gallows or before the firing squads over the past 40 years, under the mullahs’ rule. They are no longer able to feel the warmth of the sun and the energy of life, but as a result of their sacrifice, the dawn is near for the Iranian nation and the mullahs’ religious tyranny is doomed to go.”
Thirdly, Maryam Rajavi recognises that the death penalty is just one of the malign ways in which the Regime seeks to silence its opponents; explaining that the other methods, including assassinations and terrorist attacks, go straight the heart of Western democracy and that the two are intrinsically linked.
If the death penalty is abolished, so too will be the Iranian Regime’s attacks in the West.
* Maryam Rajavi is the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, an organization trying to overthrow the Iranian government. Rajavi is also the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. She is the wife of Massoud Rajavi. (Wikipedia)
Source: irannewsupdate.com, Staff, November 17, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
