A 77-page report by the international human rights organisation, published Tuesday, details the mass arrests, disappearances and torture of protesters, journalists and human rights defenders after protests triggered by a government fuel price hike spread across Iran in November.
“This litany of crimes and violations, committed with total impunity, has been accompanied by a wave of forced televised ‘confessions’ in state propaganda videos, and grotesque statements from top officials who have praised intelligence and security forces as heroes for their role in the brutal crackdown," said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The fuel price hike, years planned but suddenly implemented, came amid growing economic pressure on the country, partly as a result of US economic sanctions. With poverty and unemployment widespread, more than 70 percent of Iran's population receive financial assistance from the government.
Protest demands expanded to call for regime change, sparking panic in the corridors of power in Tehran. Tens of thousands of members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, an IRGC-linked paramilitary force, launching a vicious crackdown in which an estimated 500 to 1,500 people were killed.
Amnesty said that more than 7,000 people – including children as young as 10 – had been arrested during an after the protests. Though most of the arrests were conducted over the course of the unrest, mass arrests continued in the weeks that followed, the report said. Arrests were violent, with security forces “beating protesters and shoving them into vans,” it added.
The extensive list of methods of torture exacted on detainees in the report included electric shocks, waterboarding, mock executions, and forcible extraction of the nails from fingers or toes. In some cases, pressure was placed on protesters to give forced confessions.
Security authorities would also harass and intimidate the families of hidden protesters in order to hand themselves to the security forces.
“Much less visible has been the catalogue of cruelty meted out to detainees and their families by Iranian officials away from the public eye,” Eltahawy said.
Many detainees were subjected to enforced disappearance for days, weeks, or even months, the report said. Detainees who were disappeared were usually detained in secret prisons or facilities, which are supervised by security and intelligence bodies including the Ministry of Intelligence and the IRGC.
The organisation said it had recorded the names and details of more than 500 people who have been subjected to unfair criminal proceedings in connection with the protests.
Fatemeh Davand, a Kurdish woman from the city of Bukan, West Azerbaijan province was arrested on November 17, 2019 by ministry of intelligence agents. She was held incommunicado at a detention center in Urmia for two weeks, “where she was denied food for several days and interrogated by agents of the ministry of intelligence without a lawyer present,” the report reads.
Davand was forced to make false confession under torture and other ill-treatment, including deprivation of food and coercive tactics such as false promises that she would be released the following day. She was denied access to her family until early December, when she was permitted a single visit until her release on 25 March 2020.
Even though she told judges she had been forced to give the “confessions” by her interrogators, Davand was sentenced to a total of over four years in prison and 30 lashes for “disturbing public order” and “gathering and colluding to commit crimes against national security”.
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