ISLAMABAD: A UN human rights expert said that Iranian authorities had committed serious and widespread violations since the death of Mahsa Amini, adding those breaches could lead to crimes against humanity.
Expressing before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday, the body’s top expert on the situation in Iran, Javaid Rehman, warned that Iran was experiencing the most serious violations in the last four decades.
He further stated that the magnitude of the violations committed by Iranian authorities, particularly since the brutal death of Amini, points to the possible commission of international crimes, particularly the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearances, imprisonment, rape, torture and sexual violence, and persecution,” he said.
Presenting his latest report to the council, Javaid Rehman further said he had examined the circumstances around the death of Amini in custody following her arrest six months before for flouting the strict dress code for women by Iran and the follow-up protests.
Drawing on evidence, comprising eyewitnesses and comments from reliable medical sources, the report stated that it was obvious Amini had died last September 16 due to beatings by the state morality police.”
“I would like to say that her death was not a sole event but the latest in a long series of severe violence against gilrs and women committed by the Iranian authorities,” Rehman said.
UN Council on Human Rights Violation in Iran
The UN rights council decided last November, in the context of protests from Beijing and Tehran itself, to initiate a fact-finding mission into the repression of peaceful demonstrators after protests erupted in different parts of Iran.
“Demonstrators including children were beaten to death,” Rehman said, adding that “about 527 people, comprisng 71 children were killed, and hundreds of demonstrators were severely injured.”
Rehman also said dozens of protesters “have deprived of their eyes because of direct shots to the head,” while doctors in Iran had reported that girls and women participating in the demonstrations “were targeted with shotgun fire on their faces, breasts and even genitals.”
Javaid Rehman underscored mass arrests of human rights defenders, journalists, students and lawyers, as well as reports of torture and ill-treatment of those involved in the protests.
“Children released have told about sexual abuses, floggings, threats of rape, administration of electric shocks and how their heads were put down underwater, how they were pulled from their arms or from scarves (strip of cloth) wrapped around their necks,” he said.
“These summary executions are the symbols of a state ready to use all means to instil fear and quash protests,” he warned, pointing out that at least 17 other protesters have so far been sentenced to death while more than 100 others face charges that carry the death penalty.
