Two Iranians in the northern province of Gilan were sentenced to public flogging for animal abuse, state-run media reported.
In a January 1 report, ISNA News Agency said the two were arrested after the Head of the Rezvanshahr Environment Department received calls reporting animal abuse in the northern city.
“The perpetrators of the animal abuse were each sentenced to 74 lashes in public,” Akbar Meighi, the Head of the Environment Department said.
Social analysts believe that public flogging encourages and glorifies violence and brutality in a society.
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.
In July 2018, following the public flogging of another man in Khorasan Razavi Province, Amnesty International condemned the cruel punishment in a statement.
“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,” Amnesty’s Philip Luther said.
“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.”
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.
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