Geneva —
Iran’s violent crackdown on peaceable protests and widespread and systematic human rights violations could quantity to crimes in opposition to humanity in lots of instances, in line with a UN fact-finding mission.
In its first report back to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the three-member Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran accused the Iranian authorities of a sequence of crimes associated to the protests that occurred throughout Murtha’s detention. Amini on September 16, 2022.
These embrace wrongful demise, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrest, rape, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances.
Bangladeshi lawyer Sarah Hossain, head of the delegation who additionally submitted the report, stated these acts passed off within the context of “widespread and systematic assaults in opposition to girls and ladies” and others expressed assist for human rights. did.
“Some of those gross human rights violations rise to the extent of crimes in opposition to humanity, together with homicide, torture, rape and gender persecution, with ethnic and spiritual hyperlinks,” she stated.
The mission discovered that 551 individuals, together with no less than 49 girls and 68 kids, had been killed because of Iran’s safety forces utilizing unreasonable drive, together with firearms and assault rifles, in opposition to peaceable protesters. revealed that he had completed so.
Hossein stated safety forces arbitrarily arrested giant numbers of demonstrators, a lot of whom had been despatched to unofficial detention services run by the Ministry of Information and the Revolutionary Guards.
He stated witnesses have described the circumstances wherein they’re held as inhumane, with many detainees held in solitary confinement for lengthy durations of time and disadvantaged of any entry to household or legal professionals.
“To punish, humiliate, or extract confessions, detainees had been usually subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, together with gang rape, rape with objects, and even quantities to torture.” She added that kids had been additionally “subjected to extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and detention together with adults.”
Iran dismisses report as ‘only for enjoyable’
Kazem Gharib Abadi, secretary-general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, reacted scathingly to the report of the “so-called fact-finding mission, which was shaped because of lobbying, political gamesmanship and offers.” Certain international locations, primarily the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Canada.
He stated the panel’s report was “marred by a transparent lack of independence and impartiality”. He known as it a “political farce” and stated the report omitted any reference to a authorities investigation into the protests.
He stated that occasions in Iran final yr had been “not peaceable gatherings, however moderately devolved into an organized riot characterised by large accidents to regulation enforcement personnel and important harm to each non-public and public property.” I did,” he stated.
A supplementary report submitted to the United Nations Council by Special Rapporteur on the scenario of human rights in Iran, Jaid Rehman, paints a chilling image of a repressive regime that controls its inhabitants by means of coercion and concern.
“I stay very involved concerning the ongoing spike in executions and demise sentences,” Lehmann stated. “At least 834 individuals can be executed in 2023, a rise of 43 p.c in comparison with 2022.”
Lehmann famous that greater than half of those executions had been for drug-related offenses. He stated youngster executions proceed to happen in Iran, with no less than one youngster execution reported final yr.
Additionally, no less than 22 girls had been executed in 2023, making it “one of many highest execution charges of girls ever recorded within the nation.”
He expressed deep concern concerning the disproportionate variety of ethnic and spiritual minorities executed by the federal government for drug and security-related crimes.
In his report, Lehman paperwork situations of arbitrary arrest and allegations of torture and ill-treatment in custody. He stated the federal government seeks to stifle opposition voices by means of suppression of freedom of expression and peaceable meeting, and thru “harassment, intimidation, focusing on, arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders, legal professionals, journalists, and commerce union activists.” It explains the initiatives.
He stated he had acquired “extraordinarily disturbing stories that rape, torture and different types of sexual violence had been getting used as weapons to punish peaceable protesters.”
Somayeh Karimdoust, Iran’s human rights adviser on the Permanent Mission in Geneva, slammed the rapporteur’s report, calling it “fabricated and distorted.”
The spokesperson stated the report was not fact-based, unprofessional, and “moderately truthful and justly balanced and displays Iran’s continued progress in selling and defending human rights.” Not solely that, however… it is fully one-sided and deceptive.”
The mandates of each the Fact-Finding Mission and the Iranian Human Rights Rapporteur can be up to date at this Council assembly.
Mr. Karimdoust was clear about his place on the problem.
“Iran’s human rights watchdog is unjust, unjustified, unbiased and unjustified,” he stated.