Iran committed “crimes against humanity” by repressing protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, according to the UN mission

The security and paramilitary forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran killed hundreds of people following orders from the authorities. They also detained, imprisoned, tortured or subjected to forced disappearance, among other “inhuman acts”, numerous Iranians during the repression of protests against the regime that began on September 16, 2022, when Yina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl years, died in police custody three days after being detained in Tehran for wearing the veil “inappropriately.” That is the conclusion reached by the Independent Fact-Finding Mission appointed by the United Nations on the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a report that was released this Friday, coinciding with Women’s Day.

The text is a summary of the final document that the mission will present to the UN Human Rights Council no later than March 18. It states that the “serious violations of human rights” committed during the repression of these demonstrations by the Iranian regime “constitute crimes against humanity”, some of which could “fall under the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice” of the United Nations. . These crimes include “gender-based persecution” against the Iranian women who led the protests, whose motto was “Woman, life and freedom.”

Those crimes were not “casual,” the report states. They were part of “a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population, namely women, girls and other people who expressed their support for human rights.” This “widespread” violence and the fact that “high-level state authorities encouraged, sanctioned and supported serious human rights violations” lead the authors of the report to conclude that the perpetrators were obeying “instructions” from the regime.

Motorized Iranian police officers disperse protesters in Tehran in September 2022. – (AFP)

“Thousands of women, men and children were detained throughout the country” without any public data being provided on their number, highlights the document, which cites a figure provided by NGOs: 60,000 detainees. Their average age was 15 years. The mission reveals that “hundreds” of boys and girls, some as young as 10, were detained, imprisoned with adults, or sent to mental health institutions or reform schools.

Iran did not allow the members of the mission, jurists Sara Hossain, Shaheen Sardar Ali and Viviana Krsticevic, to travel to the country. The three researchers justify the data in the report based on official and private documents, medical records, remote interviews with victims and witnesses, these double verified, and satellite images. Its findings, the document warns, “are not exhaustive,” so the repression in Iran could have been worse than what the text denounces.

The first of the deaths investigated was that of Yina Mahsa Amini, whose death sparked the protests. The report states that shortly after her arrest by the morality police, the woman was admitted to Kasra Hospital in Tehran, already brain dead, with “trauma inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.” ”. The mission is therefore “convinced” that Amini “was subjected to physical violence that led to her death.”

After the outbreak of the mostly “peaceful” protests, the document highlights, several hundred protesters or bystanders perished due to repression. “In September 2023, a credible figure was 551 people murdered, including up to 49 women and 68 children (…). Deaths were recorded in at least 26 of the 31 provinces, with the highest number of victims in minority-inhabited regions [étnicas]particularly in the province of Sistan and Balochistan, the Kurdish regions of the country (Kurdistan and Kermanshah) and parts of Western Azerbaijan.”

In a single massacre, on September 30, 2022, 104 people were killed in Zahedan, in the eastern province of Sistan and Balochistan, when “security forces fired assault rifles (AK-47) from the police station in front of a prayer complex, targeting civilians.”

“Extrajudicial executions”

The “pattern of use of firearms,” such as assault rifles “loaded with multiple-shot ammunition,” explains “the majority of deaths,” the report continues. Police, members of the Revolutionary Guard and Basij militiamen [paramilitares] They shot in situations without any risk to them. The text mentions a peaceful demonstration “in front of a government building or a security base”, people chanting “slogans, helping others or driving a car in the vicinity” and concludes that “the selective killings of protesters constituted extrajudicial executions ”.

On other occasions, “less lethal” weapons were used, but they served to, for example, blind numerous citizens, including children, in one or both eyes with rubber bullets. Those injured in the demonstrations were often unable to access medical care, as the Ministry of Health prohibited hospitals from treating these people.

Another of the “patterns” identified by the UN fact-finding mission was that of arbitrary arrests for “dancing, singing, shouting, writing slogans or honking the horn.” Relatives of the protesters, health workers, journalists, students, teachers, activists, artists and athletes were also arrested for showing solidarity with the protests.

After the arrest, torture came, the report charges. Physical, psychological and verbal.

“Detainees, including children, were subjected to long and repeated interrogation sessions, during which they were blindfolded or hooded.” The torture included “punches, kicks, beatings, floggings and burns, electric shocks, suspensions and unnatural positions. Numerous detainees, including children, were forcibly injected with unknown substances,” says the independent UN mission, which denounces several deaths due to torture.

Especially in secret detention centers, the “pattern of sexual and gender-based violence” included “rape [también de niños] with objects, electric shocks to the genitals, forced nudity, touching and other forms of sexual violence.” The authors of the investigation mention touching the detainees’ genitals and insults such as “whore.” In an “illustrative” case, a woman detained in November 2022 in the province of Kermanshah (west) was raped by two state agents while a female agent, dressed in the chador that covers women from head to toe, , held her.

When the detainees finally appeared in court, they did so without a lawyer of their choice and without being allowed access to their files to learn what evidence there was against them. Under these conditions of deprivation of “procedural guarantees,” the nine protesters executed for the protests were sentenced to hanging. Another 19 people wait on death row for their relationship with the demonstrations, the document denounces.

The UN fact-finding mission concludes its report by encouraging member states that include the concept of universal justice in their legislation to open investigations into the repression in Iran. It also urges them to grant asylum and visas to the women, men and children of the “Women, Life and Freedom” movement, whose “courage and resilience” stands out.

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