The publication of Amnesty International’s latest report earlier this month on the conditions suffered by political prisoners and other detainees in Iran’s medieval jails should provide a wake-up call for Western politicians keen to appease the theocratic regime. Amnesty says that prisoners, detained following the nationwide uprising in 2022, have been subjected to rape and sexual assault, aimed at intimidating protesters and opponents of the regime. The report documents in harrowing detail the ordeals experienced by 45 survivors of the countrywide protests, including 26 men, 12 women and 7 children, all of whom were subjected to rape, gang rape and other forms of sexual violence.
The report identifies those responsible for the rape and sexual violence as members of the paramilitary Basij, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the ministry of intelligence and security forces (MOIS), and various branches of the police, including the Public Security Police (police amniat-e omoumi), the Investigation Unit of Iran’s police (agahi), and the Special Forces of the police (yegan-e vijeh). In a horrifying section the report says: “State agents raped women and girls vaginally, anally and orally, while men and boys were raped anally. Survivors were raped with wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hosepipes, and/or agents’ sexual organs and fingers. Rape took place in detention facilities and police vans, as well as schools or residential buildings unlawfully repurposed as detention places.”
According to the witness statements, the rape and sexual violence suffered by the prisoners was often accompanied by other forms of torture and cruelty, including floggings, beatings, electric shocks, the administration of unnamed pills and injections, denial of food and water and degrading and inhuman detention conditions. Medical care for victims of torture and for rape-related injuries was routinely denied. Most of the survivors told Amnesty that they had decided against filing official complaints about their treatment, as they feared it would lead to further brutal attacks and, in any case, they regard the Iranian judiciary as a tool of repression rather than an instrument of justice.
The Amnesty report also highlighted a leaked official document dated October 13, 2022, which revealed a cover up by the Iranian authorities of a complaint of rape against two IRGC agents, made by two young women arrested during the uprising. According to Amnesty, the leaked document from the Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran advised that the case be classified as “completely secret” and suggested it should be gradually allowed to “close over time.”
Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnés Callamard concluded: “Our research exposes how intelligence and security agents in Iran used rape and other sexual violence to torture, punish and inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on protesters, including children as young as 12. The harrowing testimonies we collected point to a wider pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ armoury of repression of the protests and suppression of dissent to cling to power at all costs.”
Agnés Callamard added: “Without political will and fundamental constitutional and legal reforms, structural barriers will continue to plague Iran’s justice system, which has time and again exposed its’ shameful inability and unwillingness to effectively investigate crimes under international law.We urge states to initiate criminal investigations in their own countries against suspected perpetrators under the principle of universal jurisdiction, with a view to issuing international arrest warrants.”
The Amnesty report comes as a wave of hangings continues in Iran’s prisons, aimed at controlling the restive population and preventing a further uprising. Since seizing power in the 1979 Islamic revolution, the mullahs’ regime has maintained its authority through killings and torture. While the regime continues to fan the flames of war in the Middle East, its main goal is to maintain its hold on power at home. This is why in tandem with its warmongering policies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, it has resorted to increasing its domestic repressive measures. According to official reports by the regime’s judiciary, in the past 10 days alone, the regime has carried out 37 executions, including several prisoners of conscience and protesters arrested during the nationwide uprising. As Amnesty has shown, those executed are routinely brutally tortured into making false confessions and have included women and prisoners who were underage when they were arrested. Dozens of prisoners on death row are currently being transferred to solitary cells to await execution.
As the clerical regime enters its final phase, it is high time for the world to take concrete measures to hold it accountable for its egregious human rights violations. Iranians must be allowed to exercise their fundamental human rights without fear of reprisal. The bloodthirsty mullahs think that by waging war in the region and killing youths inside Iran, it can delay or stop the next wave of uprisings. But these crimes will only increase the people’s determination to overthrow this evil dictatorship. The United Nations, the US, the EU and the UK, must strongly condemn this regime for its brutal torture, its use of sexual violence and arbitrary executions, and take urgent action to save the death-row prisoners, especially political prisoners. The mullahs do not represent the people of Iran and should be expelled from the United Nations.