Iranian Regime: Crimes Against Humanity

Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. In a new report Wednesday, Amnesty International said authorities committed crimes against humanity in the regime's deadly crackdown on nationwide protests. (The Associated Press)

"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]."

"They subjected thousands more to arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, enforce disappearance and torture or other ill-treatment."

"They raped and committed other sexual violence against some of those arrested in connection with the protests."

Amnesty International 

 

"She [mother Minoo Majidi] was killed on the street. She had gone to the street. She had gone to the street for change, to shout 'freedom'."

"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."

"Seeking justice is partly for my mum but to help the still many lives who are in danger."

Mahsa Piraei, resident outside Iran 

Photos of the victims of the deadly 2022 crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran after Amini's death ignited the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Amnesty International 2022 Iran Protest Crackdown Report

 

"Continued global inaction on international justice sends a very dangerous message to the Iranian authorities."

"It effectively signals that they can continue to commit crimes against humanity with absolute impunity." "This normalization of mass protest killings in Iran must end."

 Raha Bahreini, Amnesty International Iran researcher

 

Amnesty International released a major report on Wednesday saying that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity during the suppression of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. Secretary General Agnès Callamard, left, spoke at a news conference in London Wednesday, alongside Raha Bahreini, Amnesty International's Iran researcher in London and Mahsa Piraei. (Adrian Di Virgilio/CBC)

 

Amnesty International has released a new report on the Iranian regime's crackdown on the 2022 protests over the death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, arrested on charges of violating strict dress codes for women in Iran, by wearing her hijab a trifle too carelessly for the Iranian morality police. For her casual indiscretion, made by a country girl visiting the Iranian metropolis of Tehran, this was a cardinal, punishable sin and she paid for it with her life. The enraged public demanded justice on her behalf. For their troubles, the justice that was carried out by the regime was additional murders of protesters.

 

Labelling the Iranian regime's response to the public outrage as 'crimes against humanity' that included murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearances, four years following the protests Amnesty named 87 national and regional officials responsible for the carnage wrought on Iranian citizens, exercising a 'right of protest' which was unrecognized as a right by the Islamic Republic. Of the named officials, six were killed four years later in the joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes; those who were in fact responsible in the chain of command.

 

The Woman, Life, Freedom movement reproaching the theocratic authorities and demanding justice, as horrible as the consequences were, was simply a rehearsal for the much larger, more deadly response by the regime in January of 2026 when in cities across the Islamic Republic, hundreds of thousands of Iranians were out on the streets, demanding that the authorities act to amend the injuriously high cost of living. The performance of that deadly crackdown showed just what the persecutory regime was capable of, on January 8 and 9, 2026.

 

People clash with police during a protest in September 2022 in Tehran, Iran. On Wednesday, Amnesty International released a report detailing the violent police crackdown against people protesting after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, that month. File photo by EPA-EFE

 

The 1,00-page report issued by Amnesty focused on the 2022 protests. "The extensive evidence gathered and analyzed in our report leaves no doubt: Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity to crush the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising", stated Amnesty International's secretary-general, Agnes Callamard. The United Nations was urged to "create an international criminal justice mechanism aimed at prosecuting those most implicated".

 

Of the 87 officials the report named, former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and top figures in the Revolutionary Guard Corps who were killed in the U.S.-Israel war were included. Others, included Ahmad Vahidi, then the interior minister, and at the present time chief of the Revolutionary Guards, remain alive. 

 

Minoo Majidi, 62, was one of those identified by Amnesty, killed by metal pellets as she was protesting in the Western city of Kermanshah in September of 2022. Her daughter, living outside Iran, has become an outspoken critic of the murderous theocracy, advocating for the human rights of the Iranian people. Her focus is on those who were arrested, at risk of execution. Among them Ali Zarei, blinded in one eye during the 2022 protests who took refuge in Germany, then returned to Iran where he was arrested and sentenced to death. "We need to shout out their names", said Mahsa Piraei.  

"[The crackdown on the January protesters represented the] unprecedented massacres of thousands of protesters and bystanders [that] bear the same hallmarks as the crimes against humanity documented in this report, yet on an even deadlier and more staggering scale."

Amnesty International  

Amnesty's investigation identified 87 officials it says must be criminally investigated for committing crimes against humanity for their alleged involvement in implementing state policy of lethal force to crush nationwide protests. (Amnesty International)