Human rights in Iran

Today, the state of human rights in Iran continues to be generally considered a source of significant concern. Despite many efforts by Iranian human right activists, writers, NGOs and international critiques as well as several resolutions by the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Commission, the government of Iran continues to restrict freedom of speech, gender equality and other forms of freedom.

Furthermore, the Islamic regime of Iran continues to disregard the
The government of Iran has been called by several human rights groups as one of today's leading abusers of human rights, whose leaders repeatedly remove any sort of freedom including even those granted by basic human existence.

According to Amnesty International's 2004 report, at least 108 people were executed that year, most of whom had been detained as political prisoners. Amnesty has also described cases in which adolescent children were sentenced to the death penalty. Though illegal, torture is often carried out in Iranian prisons, as in the widely publicised case of photojournalist Zahra Kazemi.

Like 74 other countries in the world, Iran carries out capital punishment. As a State party to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Iran has undertaken not to execute anyone for an offence committed when they were under the age of 18, despite continuing to carry out such executions, and is one of only six nations in the world to do so. According to Article 6 of the ICCPR, "sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.".

In 2004, Iran ranked second in the world by total number of confirmed executions having carried out 159, coming behind the People's Republic of China, who committed at least 1,770. In 2005, the number dropped to 94 confirmed executions, either by hanging or stoning.

Death sentences are always administered for those convicted of murder, rape, and child molestation.

Iranian youths Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni on the scaffold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Iran