UN’s rapporteur on Iran’s human rights and its fact-finding mission have renewed their call to hold Tehran accountable for its violations, including brutal crackdown on dissent and surging executions.
The Human Rights Council hosted members of the UN's fact-finding mission that was established to investigate Iran’s crackdown on the popular protests of 2022, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code.
Her death unleashed months of mass protests across Iran, marking the biggest challenge to Iran's clerical leaders in decades. The mission released an initial report last week, stating that the regime’s crackdown on protests amounts to “crimes against humanity.”
"Our investigation established that her death was unlawful and caused by physical violence in the custody of state authorities," said Sara Hossain, the chairperson of the mission told the Council in Geneva on Monday.
She said the protests that followed were marked by "egregious human rights violations", including extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and ill-treatment, as well as rape and sexual violence. "These acts were conducted in the context of a widespread and systematic attack against women and girls, and other persons expressing support for human rights."
"Some of these serious violations of human rights thus rose to the level of crimes against humanity," she emphasized, adding that since the protests women and girls in Iran were confronted daily by discrimination "affecting virtually all aspects of their private and public lives".
"It is hard to fathom that in the 21st century, women's access to the most basic service and opportunities, such as schools, universities, hospitals, and courts, or to opportunities for employment in government or other sectors, should be subjected to a wholly arbitrary requirement of wearing the mandatory hijab," she said.
The UN's Iran rapporteur, Javaid Rehman was first to address the 55th regular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, warning of the "deeply concerning" impunity for serious human rights violations in the country.
He expressed concern about the high number of executions in Iran, pointing out that the number of hangings increased 43 percent in 2023 in comparison to a year earlier to over 800. Rehman underlined that many of the executions follow trials that do not meet fair trial standards, particularly highlighting the death sentences related to the 2022 protests.
The rapporteur also decried the regime’s treatment of women who defy the mandatory hijab laws, expressing concerns about the deprivation of their basic rights as a punishment. Iran has intensified punitive measures to enforce its strict hijab laws such as banning defiers from public services and grounding their cars.
Rehman also highlighted the situation of ethnic and religious minorities, who are disproportionately affected by the death penalty, particularly for drug-related or security offenses. He particularly expressed concern about the harassment, intimidation, targeting, arrest, and detention of human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and trade union activists, as numbers soared since the 2022 uprising. At least 79 journalists alone were arrested in the year after the protests sparked by the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini.
He emphasized that his mandate has been a platform to highlight and report on violations committed by state authorities and a voice for the millions of Iranians who are victims of the abuses. He called on the member states for the extension of his mandate for another year.
Rehman has been the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran for six years and the UN Human Rights Council is set to vote on the extension in the coming days. The Iranian government has refused to allow Rehman – or any other UN human rights rapporteurs -- to visit Iran since 1992.
After Rehman, the representative of the Iranian government dismissed his report as biased and politically motivated. Tehran’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Zahra Ershadi, reiterated that the country does not recognize Rehman’s mandate and repeated the regime’s propaganda.
Despite mountains of evidence, Iran claims that the human rights conditions in the country is ameliorating and rejects any report that portrays the country’s grim situation. A dominant tool for justification is shifting the spotlight to the situation in Gaza, with Ershadi accusing the West of not taking any serious action on Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza. The war in Gaza started after Iran-backed Islamist group Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 mostly civilians and took over 250 hostages.
Following Iran's representative, member states took turns delivering brief remarks. With the exception of Iran's allies such as Russia, North Korea, China, and Venezuela — who defend Tehran's human rights record — nearly all envoys condemned the regime's atrocities and advocated for the extension of Rehman's mandate.
At the end of the session, Rehman took the floor for his concluding remarks, during which he called on Iran to change its “contemptuous attitude on human rights.” He rebuffed Iran’s allegations of politicization, prejudice and bias, urging the Islamic Republic to allow him to visit the country.
Rehman also called on Tehran to halt targeting foreign-based media for reporting on the situation in Iran, noting that London-based Iran International and BBC Persian staff as well as their families in the country are under constant threat and persecution and death threats by the authorities.
Just last month, leaked documents revealed that Tehran’s Revolutionary Court convicted 44 foreign-based journalists and media activists in absentia two years ago over the allegation of “propaganda against the government. At the time of the verdict, the journalists were working for foreign-based Persian-language media outlets including Iran International, BBC Farsi, Manoto, Radio Farda, GEM TV and Voice of America. The document was revealed among a trove of files accessed after the hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali, or Ali’s Justice, breached the servers of the Iranian judiciary.
In a statement released on Sunday, Hossein Mozaffar, appointed as the head of a committee investigating violence during the protests by President Ebrahim Raisi, claimed that the committee's findings suggest that "certain elements" instigated violence amidst what were otherwise peaceful protests. Mozaffar further stated that security forces were responsible for only "a few" isolated incidents of violence against protesters.
Mozaffar claimed such violations are in no way the result of a policy of the government and should be attributed to individual agents who have been legally dealt with.
UN, NGOs hold regime accountable for atrocities
Contrary to the regime’s narrative of events, a United Nations fact-finding mission established in November 2022 has found that authorities committed “crimes against humanity” – and that “security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force which resulted in the unlawful killing and injuries of protestors”. The preliminary report, released on March 8, also noted a pattern of extensive injuries to protesters’ eyes that caused the blinding of scores of women, men and children including bystanders.
The full 400-page report is scheduled to be published this week.
In a report released March 6, the London-based Justice for Iran, a human rights NGO, contended that authorities deployed special combat forces and armed security forces to suppress the protests, resulting in "crimes against humanity.”
Scores of protesters were blinded with pellet guns aimed directly at their faces, and many of the tens of thousands who were arrested were tortured. Many of the victims have also claimed they were sexually assaulted during interrogations and in prison.
The protests that spread across Iran were sparked by the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the custody of the morality police hijab watchers on September 16, 2022 and lasted for several months.
Based on a coroner’s report in October 2022, the statement stressed that Amini’s death was not caused by blows to the head and limbs and instead attributed it to “underlying medical conditions”.
Last week, the UN fact-finding mission said it has "established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms Amini's body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police". This along with the "patterns of violence by the morality police" satisfied the mission that Amini was subjected to physical violence that led to her death.
Regime labels protesters as ‘rioters’
While the UN report, and other NGO’s, have often characterized Iranian protesters as peaceful – Mozaffar’s statement instead, refers to protesters as “rioters”.
The country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has also consistently dismissed the characterization of the uprising as peaceful, instead arbitrarily labeling them as "rioters" and accusing them of engaging in "terrorist acts."
In the first official figure, issued by the authorities in Iran, Mozaffar said a total of 202 civilians were killed during the protests. In addition, he accused “rioters and terrorists” of killing 54 of the security forces as well as 25 civilians during such operations.
Mozaffar also alleged that 90 of the other citizens killed during the protests were carrying melee weapons or firearms and were killed “during terrorist operations, combat, or attack against military and law enforcement bases and vital infrastructures and law enforcement agents.”
Human rights organizations have compiled the names of at least 551 protesters, including 68 children, who were killed by security forces.