A man was sentenced to 74 lashes for insulting police officers in Torbat Heydariyeh, northeastern Iran. Flogging in Iran is regularly handed out for petty crimes such as theft, as well as to dissidents and for 100 other “offences”.
According to the state-run IRIB News Agency, the man’s father was sentenced to 600 hours of public service, in exchange for a prison sentence of 3 months and 1 day for “excessive hunting”. His son, whose name has not been mentioned in the report, was sentenced to 74 lashes and a fine of 20 million rials ($76) for insulting police officers and disobeying the police.
Iran’s use of degrading punishments and torture
The Iranian regime is one of the few states that still uses degrading punishments, even though all international civil and political rights conventions have prohibited the use of inhumane punishments such as execution and flogging.
Flogging in Iran is regularly handed out by the regime to protesters, dissidents, and to those charged with adultery and theft, among other things. Flogging is a cruel and degrading punishment and is tantamount to torture.
According to Amnesty International’s Philip Luther, “The use of cruel and inhuman punishments such as flogging, amputation, and blinding are an appalling assault on human dignity and violate the absolute prohibition on torture and other degrading treatment or punishment under international law.”
“As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Iran is legally obliged to forbid torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. It’s simply unacceptable that the Iranian authorities continue to allow such punishments and to justify them in the name of protecting religious morals,” he said in July 2018 in a statement condemning the lashing of a young man for drinking alcohol.
More than 100 “offenses” are punishable by flogging under Iranian law. The offenses include theft, assault, vandalism, defamation, and fraud. They also cover acts that should not be criminalized, such as adultery, intimate relationships between unmarried men and women, “breach of public morals” and consensual same-sex sexual relations.
Source » irannewswire