At a time when 280 Israelis, close to 100,000 Americans and 342,000 people worldwide have succumbed to the fatal coronavirus, the Islamic Republic of Iran is reported to be exploiting the pandemic in order to increase its human rights violations.
According to the Iran Human Rights Monitor, while the international community is preoccupied with the humanitarian and economic toll of the pandemic, the Islamic Republic of Iran “executed 32 individuals including juvenile offenders, members of ethnic minorities and drug-related convicts. Many of those executed had participated in protests over conditions in prisons, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the regime’s failure to allow them temporary leave to stop the mass spread of the disease in prisons.”
Among those to be executed was Iranian Kurdish political prisoner Mostafa Salimi, who was among 80 prisoners to escape from Saqqez Prison in Iranian Kurdish following a mass prison protest.
In an interview, Iranian Ahwaz human rights activist Manel Msani concurred that the mullah’s regime is increasingly clamping down upon dissidents amid the pandemic: “What happened on Black Tuesday, 3/31/2020 is a war crime in the full sense of the word and a crime against humanity for the killing of the protesters in the Shiban and Speedar prisons, who were overcrowded by the regime. The prison snipers shot directly at the heads of innocent prisoners, killing at least 30 prisoners, as well as causing the outbreak of fires in large parts of the prisons.”
Around the same time period, as the world is pre-occupied with the pandemic, vandals attacked the Tomb of Queen Esther and her uncle Mordechai, which is a Jewish holy site in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
According to the Times of Israel, although only minor damage was caused to the holy site, graffiti was found showing the picture of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander Qassem Soleimani with the words “severe revenge” and another one that showed a picture of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah with the writing “the fulfilled promise.”
As the pandemic weakens Iran, the Islamic Republic has become even more aggressive against the Jewish state. In recent times, Iran waged cyber attacks against Israeli websites and an Israeli water facility.
Arutz Sheva reported that the Iranian parliament passed a law where any Iranian who speaks to an Israeli will receive five years imprisonment. And now, Mendi Safadi, who heads the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights, noted that the Islamic Republic, the Iranian militias and Hezbollah have increasingly been involved in the drug trade, both to weaken Israeli society and to finance their terror activities against Israel.
In light of these developments, the United States correctly imposed additional sanctions on the Iranian regime and Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign should be maintained.
To lesson sanctions at this critical juncture like some Democrats want would be a historic mistake.
Source » israelhayom