Opinion: Meanwhile, Iran is hanging one person every eight hours

[Swede]

Iran has been hanging people with renewed zeal since the beginning of 2011 and France 24 International News says that 66 people have been hung there since January 1st according to AFP figures based on media reports. That’s one person every 8 hours as of yesterday.
Many of them were hung for alleged drug trafficking, although homosexuals and political activists have suffered the same fate.

What is intolerable about this situation is not the fact that Iran has the death penalty, although I am against it in almost all instances. Iran is not the only country with the death penalty but what is unacceptable in Iran’s case is that it hangs people for relatively minor crimes such as adultery and theft and it hangs them without adequate investigations or legal representation being offered to the accused, without trials or after condemnation by kangaroo courts. Iran also hangs people for their political opinions. In other words, Iran uses state terror against its own people.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/303058#ixzz1CS3z1uBU

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Certainly these killings in Iran are a terrible thing,

but one wonders whether this author took any time to factor out how many innocents the US has killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq and compare against the Iranian tally of death. Is this article simply another Neo-con inspired call to take the US to war against Iran or forgive any attack by Israel?

[patrice]

4. +++++++++++++++1

[patrice]

5. Do you think international financial pressures are causing some shopping for

new military projects, in order to shore up recent rather steep investments in same as the ground shifts under everything else?

[MH1]

6. I'm not a neo-conservative and I just posted a thread on one of the hangings

A person doesn't have to think we should be invading Iran, to call attention to the evil that is happening there.

Actually my thoughts when I prepared my post were along the lines of, "so some of you think it's bad HERE?" and "not all revolutions lead to a beautiful democratic society". Not one thought of "the US should invade Iran and correct this situation post-haste." No, not a one.

[eomer]

11. We've killed perhaps a million people in ten years.

Or about 90 people every 8 hours for ten years.

Yay us!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. They are also stonning some just to mix it up

[patrice]

3. Yes. & Do we agree that it doesn't do any good to kill people for killing people?

So the real questions are about what means are at our disposal to effectively respond to problems of Human Rights violations. My guess is that, not without regard for how bad we currently have it screwed up, such efforts must be honestly and intrinsically international and they MUST begin in a court of law.

[Tejas]

7. So, invade Iran?

[Swede]

9. I think Iran's dictators' days are numbered,also.

Let Iran take care of Iran,is my opinion.

[Tejas]

10. Thank you, some here would have us invade numerous countries

to correct every wrong that exists. Some of these armchair quarterbacks drool at the idea of being so generous with money and the lives of our military.

[bhikkhu]

8. ...until we clear out our own death row, its hard to say much.

I think the death penalty here it used very poorly here as well, often the result of someone being black in the vicinity of a violent crime, or of being a black minor who looks like someone else, or being a penniless black man who happened to get a disinterested public defender.

In any case, all too often atrocities or invented atrocities (remember the Iraqi incubator babies?) are used not to defend human rights somewhere, but to justify war and subversion and economic sanctions. Which lead to worse atrocities.