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By Babak Dehghanpisheh BEIRUT (Reuters) - Within the small community of minority Arabs where he lived in southwest Iran, Hashem Shaabani was known as a teacher, an advocate for civil rights and a poet. Shaabani, 32, was arrested in February 2011 and accused of belonging to an armed separatist group. "It also made me think that we have a long road ahead before we can reach democracy and freedom." Since president Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate in Iran, took office last August, there has been a surge in executions: at least 537 people have been executed in the past eight months, nearly 200 of them since the beginning of this year, according to figures compiled by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. That compares with a total for 2013 of 624, according to data gathered by the United Nations.More...