Iranian officials have threatened that anti-regime protesters would be executed and they reportedly have made good on that threat. The first person to be killed by the regime for protesting is a 23-year-old man.

Mohsen Shekari was arrested and accused of blocking a street in Tehran and stabbing a member of the Basij militia with a machete during a protest. The Mizan news agency, which is overseen by the country’s judiciary, reported on the execution. Shekari was hanged.

He was arrested on September 25 and sentenced on November 20 by Iran’s Revolutionary Court. It is a court for political cases and political prisoner. He was accused of “moharebeh”, waging war against God. That charge carries an automatic death sentence. Shekari’s execution, and the speed of it, is seen as a clear sign of intimidation being sent to protesters. The government is beginning to escalate on their punishment of protesters.

“Iranian authorities have executed a protester, sentenced to death in show trials without any due process,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based activist group, wrote on Twitter. He said that the execution should be met with “STRONG reactions” from the international community, and that “otherwise we will be facing daily executions of protesters.”

Sanam Vakil, the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank, said that Iran’s leaders were sending a very direct message. “This could signify the apogee of its toleration,” she said. “Up until now the system sees itself as having shown restraint, but this execution could be the end point to that.”

Iran’s police chief, Hossein Ashtari, said on Thursday that “the police will not show restraint in dealing with security threats,” according to ISNA, the Iranian student news agency.

There have been over 18,000 arrests, according to human rights groups. Many have been tried by the Revolutionary Court on “moharebeh” charges. Eleven have been officially sentenced to death. The Court uses death sentences as a tool of repression.

The court is known for holding closed-door trials and obstructing the right to a fair trial by not allowing defendants to choose lawyers or by withholding evidence, rights groups say.

“Most are charged in revolutionary courts that lack legitimacy and are deprived of their right to legal representation,” Nasrin Sotoudeh, a human rights lawyer and former prisoner, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

Diana Elthawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, wrote in a report last month that 21 people were at risk of receiving death sentences over the protests.

It’s not a shock, of course, that a brutal theocracy has no regard for open, transparent trials or that the trials are not fair to the defendant. The Iranian leadership is not known for its support of human rights. 227 Iranian lawmakers have signed a parliamentary statement calling on the judiciary to “show no leniency” to protesters. They want speedy death sentences to be issued to protesters in order to make examples of them to those who are so inclined to join with the protesters. Last month, the Iranian parliament voted in favor of executing 15,000 protesters.

The regime is definitely stepping up the pressure on the protests. Just two days ago I wrote about mass food poisoning of students at universities carried out in retaliation of the students’ support of the protests and their alleged intention to take part in a nationwide three-day strike. This execution occurred as the three-day strike period ended. That’s not a coincidence. The strikes were one of the largest demonstrations of mass protest in Iran in decades.

The German foreign minister weighed in on social media.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock tweeted that Iran’s “contempt for humanity” was “boundless.” She condemned the legal proceedings as a sham trial, but warned the regime that “the threat of execution will not suffocate people’s desire for freedom.”

Die Menschenverachtung des iranischen Regimes ist grenzenlos. #MoshenShekari wurde in einem perfiden Schnellverfahren abgeurteilt & hingerichtet, weil er anderer Meinung als das Regime war. Aber die Drohung mit Hinrichtung wird den Freiheitswillen der Menschen nicht ersticken.

— Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock (@ABaerbock) December 8, 2022

So far there is no response from the Biden administration. That’s not a surprise, given its silence throughout the months of demonstrations by women and men across Iran. I’m old enough to remember when America was a voice for freedom and vocally supported the oppressed against dictatorships. I guess that’s not popular anymore.