The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley has verified for the primary time that roughly 120 folks misplaced some or all of their sight when Iranian safety brokers firing shotguns, paintball weapons and even tear fuel canisters cracked down on ladies’s rights protests that erupted in late 2022.
Center investigators cease wanting saying that safety forces broadly meant to blind the protesters. But among the victims have been shot within the face at shut vary, and proof in different circumstances additionally helps that conclusion, in accordance with evaluation introduced Tuesday (March 19) throughout a facet occasion because the U.N. Human Rights Council met in Geneva, Switzerland.
Many of the victims have been college students, and the bulk have been 30 years previous or youthful, in accordance with Berkeley’s student-led investigative workforce. One confirmed sufferer was a 5-year-old lady standing on a balcony as demonstrations happened on the road beneath.
“As I reviewed pictures of accidents and movies of protestors being overwhelmed and shot at, I noticed individuals who have been younger, like me, and likewise many ladies, like me,” stated senior Melinda Zou, a co-leader of the workforce.
“I noticed the bravery of individuals our age — college college students taking to the streets and placing their lives on the road — and that basically resonated with me.”
Alexa Koenig, school co-director of the Human Rights Center, stated the information introduced by Berkeley and its companions finally might function proof in prosecutions to carry Iranian leaders and their brokers accountable in worldwide authorized our bodies.
In the meantime, Koenig added, the findings “can be utilized by journalists, human rights advocates and others to carry extra consideration to what’s taking place on the bottom in Iran — and to advocate for a greater future for the individuals who actually are struggling the consequences of presidency crackdowns.”
Koenig introduced the Berkeley findings by video on a panel with Sara Hossain, a Bangladeshi lawyer who chairs the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The investigative panel was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council in November 2022, and the council is now weighing whether or not to resume its mandate and to deepen its probe into Iran’s violent suppression of ladies’s rights campaigns.
Alexa Koenig, school co-director of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center, introduced the findings of the middle’s probe into the blinding of Iranian protesters at an occasion throughout a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
“I will likely be residing proof of the violent oppression in Iran”
Historic protests erupted in Iran in September 2022, after 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini was arrested and accused of failing to correctly cowl her hair with a hijab as required by the nation’s Islamic regulation. Amini died three days later, and whereas police blamed a coronary heart assault, different ladies in detention along with her insisted that Amini had been fatally overwhelmed by police. In a report this month, a U.N. fact-finding panel concluded that she died from bodily violence.
Her loss of life sparked the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests throughout Iran, one of the cataclysmic mass uprisings within the historical past of the Islamic Republic. Iranian safety companies responded with a ruthless crackdown: News and human rights organizations reported that over 500 folks have been killed within the weeks after Amini’s loss of life, together with dozens of ladies and kids. More than 20,000 have been detained or imprisoned. Others have been overwhelmed, tortured or raped.
Some studies indicated that over 500 protesters had been blinded by Iranian safety forces. However, that quantity was not simply confirmed.
Two of the victims made shows on the Geneva occasion Tuesday.
One, Kosar Eftekhari, was a scholar and theater performer within the Iranian capital of Tehran when mass protests exploded in opposition to Amini’s loss of life. On Oct. 12, 2022, Eftekhari was among the many protesters when, she says, a safety agent threatened to shoot her within the eye with a paintball gun.
And then he pulled the set off. In interviews, Eftekhari has charged that the capturing was intentional — and that the agent smiled simply earlier than he fired.
Even as she sought medical therapy, she continued to talk out publicly. Finally, after being sentenced to a 5-month jail sentence for “propaganda in opposition to the state,” she fled. Today, she lives exterior of Iran.
“My eye is a mark of the crime and the cruelty dedicated by the Islamic Republic,” Eftekhari stated in a latest information report. “Wherever I am going, I will likely be residing proof of the violent oppression in Iran.”
A second speaker on the occasion in Geneva was 27-year-old Hossein Noorinikoo. Educated as a pc scientist, Noorinikoo had been employed as a hospital administrative employee when Amini was killed. In a video interview with Berkeley News, he stated he joined the protests just a few days after Amini’s loss of life. He was motivated by the assumption that girls ought to be capable to put on what they need — and likewise by a broader objection.
“The Islamic Republic believes that the lives of Iranian persons are nugatory,” he stated by a translator. “That isn’t one thing new — we’ve identified it perpetually. But this consciousness … got here extra to the floor, and it introduced us to the boiling level. We got here to the road to inform the Islamic Republic: ‘We know our lives are nothing for you, however we’re right here to defend them.’”
Hossein Noorinikoo was in a throng of protesters in a Tehran intersection in September 2022 when safety brokers used violence to disperse the gang. Plastic pellets fired by an agent hit him within the face and shredded the retina in his left eye. Today, Noorinikoo lives in a refugee camp exterior of Iran.
Courtesy of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
When he fell to the road, a lady helped get him out of the melee and right into a quiet alley. They hid below a automobile till issues quieted, then knocked on doorways till somebody allow them to in.
An ambulance got here, however refused to take him for emergency care. When he lastly made his method to a hospital, the employees wouldn’t deal with him. A second hospital admitted him by a again door, and medical employees eliminated 5 pellets from his eye. Then, although he was in excruciating ache, they despatched him house.
As Noorinikoo healed, he was so indignant about what had occurred that he escalated his protests. He painted anti-government graffiti in public areas. He publicly knocked the turban off a cleric’s head.
Finally, fearing that arrest — and a threat of execution — have been inevitable, he fled the nation. Now he’s residing in a refugee camp. He has a synthetic retina, however nearly no sight in his left eye. He’s networking with others who’ve misplaced their sight by the hands of Iranian safety forces — he says 1,500 have been blinded. And he’s persevering with his anti-government actions.
An exhaustive effort to confirm victims blinded by safety forces
The U.N. Human Rights Council fashioned its fact-finding mission even because the violence continued in November 2022. The council known as on organizations to contribute to the probe.
Along with Berkeley, different top-level organizations convened below the umbrella of the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council: the Berlin-based NGO Mnemonic; UCLA’s Promise Institute for Human Rights; and Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps. They joined with Iranian researchers and their colleagues on the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center and on the Azadi Archive to develop an enormous digital archive of open-source data.
Berkeley took on two strands of the investigation, specializing in victims who had misplaced some or all of their sight and on gender-based violence.
With help from professionals on the heart, Zou and third-year Berkeley scholar Madeleine Wong are main a small workforce of scholar investigators who’ve pored over lots of of social media pictures and movies posted by victims and citizen journalists — a lot of them that includes graphic photographs of protesters being shot within the head or face. News articles and different texts have supplied extra particulars.
Undergraduates Madeleine Wong (left) and Melinda Zou are the scholar administrators of the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center investigation that has verified over 120 Iranians blinded or partially blinded by the nation’s safety forces. The devastating accidents got here throughout protests in late 2022 and 2023 in opposition to the loss of life of Iranian scholar Mahsa Amini and in favor of ladies’s rights in Iran.
Brandon Sánchez Mejia/UC Berkeley
While their remaining report remains to be below improvement, the Berkeley workforce has verified greater than 120 incidents by which protesters have been partly or totally blinded by Iranian safety brokers. Through rigorous cross-checking of knowledge, they established the victims’ names, genders and ages, the dates and areas the place the violence occurred, and different particulars.
They additionally created profiles for every of the victims and loaded all their information into an interactive map.
Haunting patterns in Iran’s official violence
In that information, the investigators noticed patterns suggesting that safety forces typically acted intentionally to blind and disfigure protesters. And among the worst violence was directed in opposition to ladies, Koenig stated.
The investigators cited one Western information report that girls have been incessantly shot within the face, breasts or genitals; males, alternatively, have been extra typically shot within the again, buttocks and legs.
“This wasn’t simply advert hoc firing right into a crowd to get folks to disperse,” Koenig stated. “There could have been an intentionality to the blinding. We’ve seen … patterns which were acknowledged by different teams as effectively: Women being shot within the face at a prevalence that was stunning. And that may recommend that possibly there’s a sample rising of ladies specifically being focused of their face, in addition to some males.”
Among different patterns famous within the investigation:
The commonest weapon used within the assaults was a shotgun or different firearm that may fireplace shells containing small “chicken shot” pellets. Paintball weapons and gadgets for firing tear fuel cannisters additionally have been used. The weapons have been typically fired at shut vary, from a distance of as little as 5 – 6 meters. Among the victims have been two youngsters blinded after tear fuel cannisters have been geared toward their faces.
Like Hossein Noorinkoo, among the blinded protesters stated they have been shot by males in black who have been driving bikes — presumably members of Iran’s notorious Basij safety militia. And in some circumstances, like Eftekhari’s, the assailants smiled as they pulled the set off or laughed after the shootings.
Some reported that they have been shot after being taken into an alley or one other remoted space. Other victims have been nowhere close to a protest.
Some reported that abuse and harassment continued after the shootings. Investigators discovered that some blinded protesters have been later arrested. Some misplaced their jobs. Some have been tortured.
Berkeley’s management in human rights investigations
Popular disenchantment with Iran’s tight controls of ladies have been a characteristic of the nation’s life nearly for the reason that Islamic revolution in 1979, and with the loss of life of Amini, that frustration exploded into rage. But Iranian repression of dissent has been so fierce, and entry so restricted for impartial observers, that human rights consultants struggled to get an in depth understanding of what was taking place on the bottom.
Berkeley’s Human Rights Center was uniquely positioned to see by the fog of battle and the limitations erected by Iran’s authorities.
The heart has lengthy provided coaching to attorneys, journalists and advocates who deal with human rights. Its student-powered Human Rights Investigations Lab, based in 2016, has deep expertise in open-source evaluation of rights violations.
The Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations, co-published by the Human Rights Center on the UC Berkeley School of Law and the United Nations, will likely be launched formally later this yr.
In 2020, the middle helped the Washington Post in an investigation that discovered 12 Americans have been blinded or partly blinded by regulation enforcement throughout nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd.
More broadly, the middle was a frontrunner in creating the Berkeley Protocol, a rigorously detailed framework for accumulating, analyzing and storing information from social media and different open-source supplies in order that they meet the requirements wanted for proof within the worldwide prosecution of rights violations.
Even earlier than the protocol was formally adopted by the U.N., it had been translated into Ukrainian and was being utilized by Ukrainian police, prosecutors and others to examine Russian warfare crimes. The doc additionally has been translated into six different languages.
When Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Berkeley final month to formally launch the protocol, he acknowledged Berkeley’s significance within the Iran investigation.
“It’s incredible that we will do that work, and the Berkeley Protocol is an actual seen instance of that cooperation [between the U.N. and the Human Rights Center],” Türk advised the viewers. “For occasion, the fact-finding mission on Iran doesn’t have entry to Iran. So consequently, one of these evaluation is extraordinarily necessary.”
A mission that resonates in Berkeley — and world wide
For Wong and Zou, the scholar leaders of the Iran undertaking, a number of semesters of expertise in state-of-the-art investigative methods have ready them to handle a posh, multi-partner undertaking with a spotlight that’s exceptional for 2 undergraduates.
Protesters in London marked the anniversary of the loss of life of Mahsa Jina Amini whereas in custody of Iran’s morality police. The London crowd provided help for lots of of Iranians who have been blinded or partially blinded by Iranian safety brokers throughout a crackdown on mass demonstrations after Amini’s loss of life in September 2022.
Martin Pope/Sipa USA by way of AP
But in interviews, they stated that the work resonated with them on a private stage, too. Wong described her early training at Notre Dame High School in San Jose, the place ladies’s rights and ladies’s empowerment have been a every day theme.
“The Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran transcend religions and borders,” she stated. “This is a matter that everybody in each nation ought to care about. It’s fairly actually a authorities that’s suppressing ladies’s proper to decorate as they need to costume. They’re saying, ‘You must abide by these legal guidelines or we’ll truly harm you.’”
Koenig stated the investigation seeks to defend the rights of the protesters and “to make sure that legal guidelines are utilized globally in methods which are nondiscriminatory.”
But she, too, feels a human connection to the battle in Iran.
The Berkeley probe goals to safeguard “the autonomy of ladies and women to find out their lives and their futures, starting from whether or not they safe an training to deciding costume,” she stated. “And it’s been inspiring to see the ladies and women in Iran, and their supporters, come collectively to battle for girls, freedom and life — objectives that clearly resonate with folks world wide, together with right here in Berkeley.”