Mahdi Mousavian Protests His Eye-Cutting Sentence by Going on Hunger Strike

Iran Human Rights Organization reported that Mahdi Mousavian, a political prisoner in Shahrekord prison, has gone on hunger strike since Friday, January 26, in protest against his sentence of eye-for-eye retribution for allegedly throwing a stone that caused the loss of an officer's left eye during the protests in December 2017 in Farrokhshahr, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province. An informed source told the organization that "Mahdi Mousavian's demand is the cancellation of his eye-for-eye sentence, and he insists he is innocent and did not throw the stone." Mr. Mousavian, a worker from Farrokhshahr, was arrested on December 30, 2017, and accused of throwing a stone at a police colonel, which hit the officer's left eye and caused his blindness. Despite Mousavian's denial, a court session was held on January 26, 2019, where he was found guilty. The plaintiff requested retribution for the loss of the left eye and also demanded compensation. Iran Human Rights Organization reported that "the plaintiff demanded 14 billion tomans to refrain from retribution, but Mahdi Mousavian's family could not gather such an amount." His eye-for-eye sentence is set to be carried out in Shahrekord in the coming days. Mahmoud Amiri-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights Organization, previously stated about this "unjust sentence" for Mr. Mousavian: "Eye-for-eye retribution is a medieval practice that the Islamic Republic uses to intimidate society." He added, "The United Nations should not tolerate eye gouging as a punishment by a member state in 2024" and urged the international community and all countries that have diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic to "send this message to the Islamic Republic that executing such a sentence will have serious consequences for it." In this context, Sina Yousafi, a lawyer and human rights defender, said on January 25 to Voice of America that the Islamic Republic has included mutilation as part of its punishments to "prove its establishment." He also described retribution as "a product of a revenge-seeking era leftover from primitive human tribes" that has been rejected by the global community in the present age. Mr. Yousafi stated that after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, such punishments became a serious part of Iran's criminal laws, and many lawyers opposed it from the beginning, but some clerics at that time issued fatwas declaring opponents of retribution as apostates and considered opposition to it as a clear denial of the Quran. According to this human rights lawyer, "The Islamic Republic has resorted to executing such punishments from the beginning to prove the establishment of the Islamic system in Iran, including amputation of hands, fingers, and gouging out eyes as part of its punishments." Sina Yousafi emphasized that "according to fundamental human rights principles, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, applying such punishments is a clear instance of torture and a gross violation of human rights, and Iran, as a country that has accepted these principles, must be committed to them." In a video circulated on social media, a civil activist sitting next to Mahdi Mousavian explains that this young man was condemned to "eye-for-eye retribution" without any confession, evidence, or proof, and while being deprived of having a chosen lawyer, solely based on the false testimony of officials. Amputation is one type of corporal punishment that the Islamic Republic continues to implement despite warnings from international human rights organizations and officials. International human rights organizations have consistently criticized the execution of such punishments, which Amnesty International has described as "a gross violation of human rights." Warnings about the danger of executing the eye gouging punishment for this protesting worker have emerged ahead of the visit of Nada Al-Nashif, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to Iran. The U.S. State Department's deputy spokesperson stated that the Islamic Republic of Iran suppresses to maintain power, asserting that none of the political system's dimensions in the Islamic Republic of Iran are democratic or transparent, including management, judicial, and electoral aspects. According to Vedant Patel, the world has been aware of this reality for some time.