On Thursday, December 6, Amnesty International released its latest report on the conditions of Iranian regime opponents and detainees of the protests in 2022 in Iran. The organization stated that the regime security forces have extensively used sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence to intimidate protesters and opponents.
The report documented in detail the harrowing ordeals of 45 survivors of nationwide protests in 2022, including 26 men, 12 women and seven children, who were subjected to rape, gang rape and/or other forms of sexual violence by intelligence and security forces.
The report reveals that perpetrators of rape and other forms of sexual violence included agents from the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force, and the Ministry of Intelligence, as well as different branches of the police force including the Public Security Police (police amniat-e omoumi), the Investigation Unit of Iran’s police (agahi), and the Special Forces of the police (yegan-e vijeh).
The report reads in part, “State agents raped women and girls vaginally, anally and orally, while men and boys were raped anally. Survivors were raped with wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hosepipes, and/or agents’ sexual organs and fingers. Rape took place in detention facilities and police vans, as well as schools or residential buildings unlawfully repurposed as detention places.
Rape and other sexual violence were frequently accompanied by other forms of torture and ill-treatment, including beatings, floggings, electric shocks, administration of unidentified pills or injections, denial of food and water, and cruel and inhuman detention conditions. Security forces also routinely denied survivors medical care, including for rape-related injuries.
The overwhelming majority of survivors told Amnesty International that they did not file complaints after release, fearing further harm and believing the judiciary to be a tool of repression rather than redress.
Amnesty International also examined a leaked official document, dated 13 October 2022, and published by a media outlet outside Iran in February 2023, which reveals that the authorities covered up complaints of rape made by two young women against two Revolutionary Guards agents during the protests. The Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran advised in the document to classify the case as “completely secret” and suggested to gradually “close [the case] over time.”
“Our research exposes how intelligence and security agents in Iran used rape and other sexual violence to torture, punish and inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on protesters, including children as young as 12. The harrowing testimonies we collected point to a wider pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ armory of repression of the protests and suppression of dissent to cling to power at all costs,” Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnés Callamard said.
“Amnesty International shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on 24 November but has thus far received no response,” Callamard said.
“Without political will and fundamental constitutional and legal reforms, structural barriers will continue to plague Iran’s justice system, which has time and again exposed its shameful inability and unwillingness to effectively investigate crimes under international law,” Callamard added.
Agnés Callamard addressed free countries saying, “We urge states to initiate criminal investigations in their own countries against suspected perpetrators under the principle of universal jurisdiction, with a view to issuing international arrest warrants.”
