Zürcher Nachrichten - Amnesty says Iran committed 'crimes against humanity' in crackdown on 2022 protests

The crackdown in 2022 amounted to "crimes against humanity" including murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance, Amnesty said in a report marking four years since those protests, warning that the authorities' actions earlier this year were "on an even deadlier and more staggering scale".

The London-based rights group named 87 national and regional officials, six of whom were subsequently killed in US-Israeli air strikes, who it believed were responsible in the chain of command and should face international justice.

Several months of protests against the Islamic republic's theocratic authorities known as the "Woman. Life. Freedom." movement erupted in September 2022 following the custody death of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women.

These were the biggest protests in Iran in recent years until demonstrations earlier this year sparked by anger over the cost of living that peaked on the nights of January 8 and 9.

On both occasions authorities responded with a deadly crackdown that caused international outrage. Amnesty's 1,000 page report focused on the 2022 protests while making clear that the crackdown in 2026 followed the same pattern while being even more severe.

"The extensive evidence gathered and analysed in our report leaves no doubt: Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity to crush the 2022 Woman Life Freedom uprising," said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International's Secretary General.

Amnesty urged the UN General Assembly to "create an international criminal justice mechanism aimed at prosecuting those most implicated".

- 'Unlawfully killed' -

The 87 officials it named included former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and top figures in the Revolutionary Guards who were killed in the US-Israeli war this year.

But some others, including Ahmad Vahidi, who was then the interior minister and now chief of the Revolutionary Guards, are still alive.

"The security forces deployed by the authorities unlawfully killed hundreds of protesters and bystanders, including dozens of children" in the crackdown from September to December 2022, Amnesty said.

"They subjected thousands more to arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, enforced disappearance and torture or other ill-treatment. They raped and committed other sexual violence against some of those arrested in connection with the protests," it added.

Amnesty said it had identified 377 protesters and bystanders, including 56 children, who lost their lives during the 2022 protests, of whom at least 326 were killed by security forces, including with metal pellets fired at close range.

- 'Unprecedented massacres' -

One of those killed identified by Amnesty in the report was 62-year-old Minoo Majidi who was hit by metal pellets while protesting in the western city of Kermanshah in September 2022.

"She was killed on the street. She had gone to the street for change, to shout 'freedom'," her daughter Mahsa Piraei, who lives outside Iran, told AFP.

"The world thinks the protests were about freedom for women. They were, but they were also about freedom for people and the right to life," she added.

Amnesty described the crackdown this year as the "unprecedented massacres of thousands of protesters and bystanders" which "bear the same hallmarks as the crimes against humanity documented in this report, yet on an even deadlier and more staggering scale".

"Seeking justice is partly for my mum but to help the still many lives who are in danger," Piraei added, referring to the dozens of people arrested during the January protests who rights groups say are at risk of execution.

They include Ali Zarei, who was blinded in one eye during 2022 protests and then took refuge in Germany, but returned to Iran this year and was arrested and sentenced to death.

"We need to shout out their names," Piraei added.

T.Gerber--NZN