Iranian authorities have used rape and sexual assault to punish or silence these arrested throughout the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, Amnesty Worldwide mentioned in a report launched on Wednesday. Amnesty documented 45 circumstances of sexual violence perpetrated in opposition to males, girls and kids who had been detained and says the precise variety of victims could also be a lot greater.
Iranian protesters detained throughout months of nationwide protests as a part of the “Girl, Life, Freedom” motion that emerged after the demise in custody of Mahsa Amini had been raped and subjected to different types of sexual violence by Tehran’s intelligence and safety forces, Amnesty Worldwide mentioned in a report documenting the ordeals of 45 survivors.
The report gathered testimonies from 26 males, 12 girls and 7 kids as younger as 12 who had been subjected to rape and different types of sexual violence and torture.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish girl, died on September 16 final 12 months after being arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for sporting her hijab incorrectly.
In a violent crackdown on the protests sparked by her demise, Iranian legislation enforcement officers arrested tens of hundreds of activists and demonstrators and subjected them to torture and different in poor health remedy, the 120-page report mentioned.
Learn extraRepression in Iran: ‘They took my garments off and lower my hair’
“Sexual violence was utilized by state brokers with complete impunity as a weapon of torture to crush protesters’ spirit, shallowness and sense of dignity, to discourage additional protests, and to punish them for difficult the political and safety institution and its entrenched system of gender-based discrimination, as enforced by means of draconian laws together with abusive obligatory veiling legal guidelines,” the report mentioned.
“My buddies and I eliminated our veils in public and we had been chanting. The thought by no means crossed my thoughts that the safety forces would arrest us,” one protester, Maryam, advised Amnesty. “Greater than 30 members of the Revolutionary Guards got here and threw us right into a van in a horrific manner. The brokers blindfolded and handcuffed us within the van and stored hurling sexual slurs at us and calling us ‘slutty women’. They referred to as us vulgar phrases, mocked and ridiculed us, slapped us, and punched and kicked us in our genitals and breasts.”
Rape, torture and compelled confessions
Blindfolded and handcuffed, Maryam mentioned she was delivered to a detention centre and separated from her buddies by Iran’s morality police.
Put in solitary confinement and interrogated, Maryam mentioned she was then gang raped and tortured by the state brokers.
“There have been three of them, together with the interrogator … They violently raped me in my vagina with their sexual organs and raped me anally with a drink bottle,” she mentioned. She ultimately handed out.
“I regained consciousness after they threw water on my head and shouted to others ‘Come and take this filthy slut’,” Maryam recounted within the report.
She was ultimately thrown in a cell. “The guards then mentioned to me[,] ‘You’re all hooked on penis, so we confirmed you an excellent time. Isn’t this what you search from liberation?’”
After struggling hours of rape and sexual violence for the aim of inflicting most humiliation and punishment, the traumatised and disoriented detainees had been typically coerced into giving false “confessions” of connections to international entities and receipt of funds to participate in protests, the report mentioned.
One other protester, Hossein, who was arrested by plainclothes brokers, mentioned he was subjected to torture and sexual violence and compelled to confess.
“They eliminated my garments aside from my underwear. They turned on the cooler after which sprayed water on my physique. I used to be freezing and so they advised me they might solely cease if I made compelled ‘confessions’ and mentioned no matter they needed me to say,” he mentioned.
One other male protester, Jamshid, mentioned he was given electrical shocks to his testicles and threatened with rape if he didn’t admit to all of the allegations in opposition to him.
State complicity
Perpetrated by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Basij paramilitary power, the intelligence ministry and the police power, Amnesty mentioned the rape and torture befell in official detention services or safety compounds in addition to unofficial locales reminiscent of homes or house buildings recognized colloquially as “protected homes” (khanehay-e amn) or at makeshift detention centres reminiscent of warehouses, parking heaps and colleges.
Regardless of the quite a few first-hand accounts and even the identification of perpetrators by the victims, not one of the authorities have been held accountable. A lot of the victims have avoided submitting complaints for concern of repercussions and a deep distrust of Iran’s judiciary, the report mentioned.
Among the many documented circumstances, solely three dared to hunt authorized motion after launch. Two had been then compelled to withdraw their complaints after receiving threats from the Iranian safety forces. The third was ignored for months and was advised by a high-ranking official that he “mistook” a physique seek for sexual violence, Amnesty mentioned.
“Jail rape has existed for the reason that early days of the Islamic Republic,” mentioned Azadeh Kian, a French-Iranian sociologist, noting that Amnesty’s findings had been unsurprising.
“Within the Eighties, younger girls arrested for political offenses had been raped earlier than execution. Their executioners thought that in the event that they had been virgins, they might go to heaven, which they shouldn’t be entitled to. A short lived marriage was organised and a dowry within the type of sweets despatched to the woman’s household,” Kian mentioned.
Denouncing the complicity of Iran’s judiciary in protecting up studies of rape, sexual violence and different torture practices, Amnesty’s Secretary Basic Agnés Callamard mentioned the victims had been left with no choices. “Victims have been left with no recourse and no redress, solely institutionalized impunity, silencing and a number of bodily and psychological scars operating deep and much,” she mentioned because the report was launched.
The physique as a battlefield
Along with the rapes and torture, victims additionally reported merciless and inhuman detention circumstances reminiscent of excessive overcrowding, filthy and unsanitary circumstances, infestations of cockroaches and mice, a scarcity of bedding, and poor or no entry to bathrooms or hygiene.
“There have been no sanitary services, which was insufferable for them,” mentioned one psychological well being skilled cited within the report, who handled a teenage woman imprisoned for greater than a month after protesting close to her faculty together with her buddies.
Girls and women had been additionally denied menstrual merchandise.
Whereas a rising variety of intellectuals and human rights activists, together with jailed Nobel Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, have denounced sexual violence in opposition to feminine prisoners, many victims stay silent for concern of ostracism and repercussions.
The prevalence of sexual violence throughout the “Girl, Life, Freedom” rebellion is troublesome to estimate given the stigma and well-founded fears of reprisals resulting in under-reporting, Amnesty mentioned.
However Kian mentioned increasingly persons are braving the results.
“In the present day, victims are talking out,” she mentioned.
“#MeToo has occurred and so has the ‘Girl, Life, Freedom’ motion,” Kian mentioned. “The physique is utilized by the safety forces as a battlefield, so denouncing [these acts] has turn into an act of resistance.”
This text was tailored from the unique in French.