The United Nations confirmed on Tuesday that Iranian security forces used live ammunition to quell protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran police custody on September 16, after the 22-year-old was arrested for wearing the veil not well placed. “Security forces have sometimes responded with live ammunition,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The UN indictment confirms the numerous users of Iranian social networks who, bypassing the internet service disruption imposed by the authorities, distributed videos and photos of the demonstrations. Some of these publications credit the Tehran regime with several deaths from gunshot wounds during the protests, including several young women. Iranian authorities have so far admitted 41 deaths – in addition to 1,186 detained – a number that the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights puts the number at least 76 in the 11 days the protests have been going on. Alluding to this latest census, the UN spokeswoman reiterated the “reliability” of the methods of this organization, which in many cases compiles its list of the deceased on the basis of death certificates sent to them by victims’ families.
According to information from this NGO, six women and four children are among the dead, and most families had to bury their dead at night. They were also pressured not to hold public funerals. Iran Human Rights alleges that the authorities threatened to sue these families if they disclosed the deaths of their loved ones.
However, neither the repression nor the high death toll – which could be even higher than known – have stopped the protesters, many of them young, from continuing to clash with the security forces in various cities of Iran, even in traditional small towns considered conservative. According to Iran Human Rights, numerous Iranians took to the streets on Monday evening and chanted “women, life, freedom” in Tehran, Yazd and Tabriz, among others. Even in the affluent neighborhoods of northern Tehran, many residents hiding in the dark chanted from their windows “Death to the Dictator,” a reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s highest religious and practical political authority.
Various social media posts, along with some Iranian activists, have circulated a call for a general strike in Iran over Amini’s death.
impunity
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Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the United Nations, during her speech in Geneva, criticized the impunity of those responsible for the deaths of protesters and other human rights violations, both in connection with the current protests and those in November 2019, July 2021 and last May. These previous demonstrations were motivated by the cost of living, high inflation and the rise in the price of products such as petrol and not by a political claim, as is the case with the current protests against Iran’s repressive women’s laws. ultimately against the regime established in Iran after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
“We are concerned by the disparaging statements made by some leaders and the apparently disproportionate and unnecessary use of force against protesters,” said the spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office. According to this organization, among the thousand arrested are human rights defenders, lawyers, activists and twenty journalists.
Among those arrested are four lawyers who have taken on the defense of detained protesters, as fellow lawyer Saeid Dehghan denounced in a tweet, noting that this amounts to a “ban on defending protesters.” . Also Nilufar Hamedi, the journalist for the semi-reformist newspaper Shargh Daily, who reported on the arrest and subsequent death of Mahsa Amini in Kasri hospital. Hamedi is being held in solitary confinement. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has already increased the number of whistleblowers arrested for reporting on the demonstrations to 20.
Another renowned photographer, photojournalist Yalda Moaiery, was also arrested days ago and is being held in Qarchak women’s prison in the Iranian capital. Maryam Karimbeigi and Golrokh Iriyaei, two well-known activists, are also in police custody, the Free Workers’ Union of Iran reported Monday, as is freedom of expression activist Hossein Ronaghi. All of these detainees had shared images and videos of the demonstrations and Iranians burning their veils, the garment that has become a symbol of women’s oppression in Iran, on their social media profiles.
In parallel with the repression of the protests, Tehran is attempting to silence social networks, which have become the main vehicle for the dissemination of abuses by the security forces and the regime. The United Nations has confirmed that the Iranian authorities are cutting off wired and wireless communications, as well as access to the internet and various social networks. Even before this new wave of protests, Iranians could not access Facebook or Twitter, although the country’s citizens often circumvent this ban with VPNs – virtual private networks that hide the user’s location – which are now also failing.
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