Mission urges international locations to prosecute accountable officers beneath common jurisdiction
Crimes towards humanity: Iranian state atrocities revealed in first report of UN Fact-Finding Mission
March 19, 2024 – Detailed first report reveals quite a few rights violations amounting to “crimes towards humanity,” together with wrongful loss of life, extrajudicial executions, gratuitous deadly power, torture, and rape. , arbitrary arrests, and enforced disappearances, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (FFMI) report on Iran was launched right now.
“FFMI confirmed that though the protests had been largely peaceable, they had been met with brutal militarized power,” mentioned Hadi Ghami, govt director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
“As violent repression and executions proceed in Iran, it’s extra essential than ever that FFMI renews its mandate in order that it may proceed its work,” Ghami added.
“All Member States ought to heed the fact-finding mission’s name to carry accountable these state crimes and atrocities by the train of common jurisdiction,” Ghami mentioned.
Protests established by the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in November 2022 and sparked by the killing of Mahasa Jina Amini, 22, in state custody, three days after her arrest on hijab expenses in September of the identical yr. It was established to research the Islamic Republic’s violent crackdown on actions. FFMI mentioned the killings of no less than 551 protesters, no less than 49 girls and 68 youngsters, mass blinding, the arbitrary arrest of greater than 20,000 individuals, and the torture and rape of detainees, together with youngsters. It has collected intensive proof of state brutality.
To this present day, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) stays dedicated to silencing the victims and their households killed in road protests who took half in what turned often known as the Women, Life and Freedom motion. We proceed to take coordinated measures.
Human rights atrocities uncovered: brutal repression and systematic violence towards protesters in Iran
FFMI’s “chamber papers”, which could be downloaded from FFMI’s official webpage, are detailed in a harrowing 581-page exposé and make clear the gross human rights violations dedicated by the Islamic Republic through the 2022 protests in Iran. is guessing. These embrace:
IRI’s “egregious” human rights violations, which quantity to “crimes towards humanity,” embrace homicide, imprisonment, torture, rape, and persecution on grounds of gender, ethnicity, or faith. These acts had been a part of a “widespread and systematic assault on civilians, particularly girls and ladies.” The authorities sought to suppress the protests “in any respect prices.” Security forces opened hearth on demonstrators with assault weapons, with dependable figures saying as much as 551 individuals had been killed, together with no less than 49 girls and 68 youngsters. Security forces used “significantly brutal and militarized violence” towards ethnic minorities, significantly in Sistan and Baluchestan, the Kurdish area, and components of western Azerbaijan. Security forces focused important physique components of demonstrators and bystanders, together with their faces, heads, necks, torsos, and genitals, with assault rifles and metallic pellets. Security forces inflicted “a vicious sample of eye accidents” on demonstrators and bystanders, together with girls and kids. Women, ladies, males, and boys are disadvantaged of entry to legal professionals and their households for weeks and are subjected to punishments that embrace rape, gang rape, object rape, beatings, flogging, burns, electrical shocks, suspension from work, and stress positions. Ta. Judges relied on torture-tainted proof, dismissed claims of rape, torture, and ill-treatment, and restricted defendants to state-approved attorneys. By January 2024, no less than 9 younger individuals had been arbitrarily executed with out the appropriate to a good trial and due course of. By January 2024, Iranian courts had sentenced no less than 26 individuals to loss of life in reference to the protests.
Even now, a yr and a half after the protests started, accountability for the victims has not been fulfilled.
FFMI identified that:
“The Iranian authorities continues to take concerted steps to silence victims and households who proceed to vigorously search the reality and a modicum of justice. They systematically intimidated, intimidated, assaulted, and arrested households who denied them the appropriate to mourn. Those who supported them, together with legal professionals and journalists, had been additionally repeatedly arrested and prosecuted.”
For these causes, the mission emphasised the necessity for accountability for victims and their households on the home degree in Iran, and the necessity for Member States to train common jurisdiction with out procedural restrictions with respect to all crimes beneath worldwide legislation. He emphasised the necessity for accountability.
Member States also needs to discover transformative compensation for victims, together with by restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and ensures of non-recurrence.
CHRI Director-General Had Ghami traveled to Geneva final week to attend the fifty fifth session of the Human Rights Council (26 February to five April 2024) and reminded HRC Member States of the mission of the Fact-Finding Mission. equally urged the Human Rights Council to resume its mandate. Special Rapporteur on the state of affairs of human rights in Iran.
The name for the mandate to be renewed is joined by 43 worldwide human rights organizations, together with imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Iranian girls’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi.