Necks snapped in Iran. Six women executed in August (the UN women’s agency sends its best wishes to Beyoncé)

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi, Iranian twins: the former has been sentenced to death, the latter to twenty-five years’ imprisonment. Their ‘crime’ was taking part in the January protests suppressed by the Islamic regime, whilst, according to human rights NGOs, 60,000 people have been released from prison since January. August will be remembered as one of the darkest months for Iranian women. At least 82 people were executed in a single month, including six women. Never before have there been so many. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, said: “They are victims long before they reach the gallows. The Islamic Republic not only takes their lives through the death penalty, but also through the system that has abandoned them for years.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran carries out the highest recorded number of executions of women worldwide, whilst simultaneously imposing a system of gender apartheid. Of the five executions in August, four were women accused of killing their husbands or boyfriends. Two were in forced marriages, including one who was a ‘child bride’ and defended herself against a sexual assault. The theocratic criminal law interprets a woman’s self-defence as premeditated murder. Forced into marriage, Marzieh Nayeri was repeatedly subjected to sexual harassment by her husband’s business associates. She seized a knife in self-defence, wounding the attacker and stabbing her husband during the struggle. Despite her sworn testimony that she had acted solely to protect her own life and honour, the court rejected her claim of self-defence. She was convicted and hanged on 8 August.

Instead, the rapper Erfan Mirzaei was hanged at dawn on Sunday 6 September. No warning. No final call to his family. Just the rope and the silence. He sang of freedom and hope in a country where a song can cost you your life. Erfan was arrested during the protests in January and was killed in secret, outside the official figures. Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The official UN statement on the meeting stated that Guterres and Pezeshkian discussed the “humanitarian and economic consequences” of the conflict between Iran and the United States. “The issue of Iran’s crackdown on protesters was not addressed,” as confirmed by a UN spokesperson to investigative journalist Efrat Lachter, who raised the matter at a press conference in Geneva. There has also been silence on the ‘pink gallows’ in Iran from the UN agency for women, UN Women, which in recent days, however, found the time to send birthday wishes to Beyoncé and Zendaya. Moreover, the Vice-Chair of the United Nations Committee on Programme and Coordination – who will help draw up the plan on how to ‘end violence against women’ – is Iranian.

At least until a few years ago, Iranian women found hanging from cranes early in the morning received expressions of solidarity from Europe and the West. Rome, too, rallied to save the life of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to stoning for ‘adultery’. Philosophers and writers penned open letters. Giant posters of the Iranian woman were displayed on the façades of Palazzo Chigi, the Campidoglio and Palazzo Valentini. Demonstrations were organised outside the Iranian embassy in Rome, at 363 Via Nomentana, to demand that Sakineh’s life be spared. The Democratic Party (PD) had also joined the campaign, with Silvia Costa and Debora Serracchiani launching a torchlight procession at the European Parliament in Strasbourg under the slogan ‘A light for Sakineh’s life’. In the end, the Iranian regime released Sakineh, partly thanks to Western mobilisation, which sometimes bears fruit. But those were different times. Today, Iranian women are hanged without the West even hearing the dull thud of their necks snapping. God forbid that this should play into the hands of Trump and Netanyahu’s warmongering agenda.