Iran’s ‘women, life, freedom’ revolution alongside the crimes of the Islamic Republic

? Is the Islamic Republic of Iran committing a crime against humanity

According to the UN human rights expert, Javad Rahman, the answer is clearly yes as the scale and gravity of Iran’s violations of human rights amount to a crime against humanity.

The UN rapporteur on Iran, Javad Rahman came as the EU and the UK imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officers, judicial officials and clerics, but held back from proscribing the IRGC.

Rehman warns Iran is experiencing the most serious violations in four decades. An exemplary case,  he claims, is the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in September 2022 which resulted from beatings by the “morality police”. While Iran said she died from a pre-existing neurological disorder, reliable medical sources pointed to state culpability.

Nevertheless, this is only a single case and part of a bigger problem.Firstly, Iranian Journalist Amir-Hadi Anvari cited the data released by Iran’s National Organization for Civil Registration and shows that  the number of deaths registered in the country from October 22rd to November 22st of last year was around 5,000 more than in the previous months.No exact figures have been given due to the information reliability Many people whose bodies have not been turned over to their families, ask them not to announce that these people were killed in the demonstrations and not to hold a public funeral for them. Also, there is a lot of pressure. On behalf of the security forces, hospitals and medical centres should not inform about the dead and confine the injured people in the hospital and report to the law enforcement authorities.

Secondly, we can mention the torture of political prisoners.

An Iranian political prisoner has sent a voice message to Javaid Rehman describing the torture that he has faced in detention.

Moreover, Khaled Pirzadeh, a former bodybuilding champion who has been in Ahvaz Central Prison since June 2019, told Javaid Rehman that he has suffered numerous injuries as a result of the harsh treatment, including beatings.

“I am talking to you from the dungeons of oppression and tyranny in Iran. For more than sixteen months, I have been hospitalised in Ahvaz Central Prison due to the injuries caused by the brutal agents of the Islamic republic,” 

Pirzadeh said that he suffered from a fracture in his spine and that his left leg was also broken. He also said he was suffering from kidney failure as well as digestive and heart problems, which caused his weight to drop sharply from 127 kilograms to 57 kilograms.

Pirzadeh said the Iranian judiciary and prison authorities have refused to provide him with outside health treatment, adding “they have only transferred me to the prison hospital and there they have filed a false medical case for me.”

Thirdly, In addition to torture, the disappearance of the religions converts and non-believers is another factor that can be pointed out.

The Iranian judiciary has jailed another Christianity convert on spurious charges. Fariba Dalir, 51, was sent to Evin Prison on Saturday, April 16th  for a two-year sentence for “acting against national security by establishing and leading an Evangelical Christian church”.

A report by Article 18, a London-based campaign for religious freedom in Iran, states that Dalir was one of six converts arrested in Tehran last July, including her husband, Soroush. Five of them were sentenced in December last year, with the other four, including Soroush, each jailed for 10 months for being a member of the church. The sixth Christian, a 17-year-old girl, was released without charge, but only after spending 10 days in solitary confinement and being subjected to intense interrogations in a detention centre run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

There are many other reports of solitary confinement, one of which is the confinement of famous Iranian rapper Tomaj Salehi.

Salehi has been in solitary confinement for 89 days at Dastgerd Prison in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, according to the latest update from his official Twitter account, which is being administered by his supporters.He was detained by Iranian authorities on October 30, 2022, and charged with several offences, including “corruption on Earth,” a serious crime punishable by death. His songs denounce Iran’s Islamist rulers and the perceived injustices they have perpetrated against the Iranian people.Salehi also embraced Iran’s anti-government protest movement that began last September. In the days before his arrest, he posted videos of himself on Instagram participating in peaceful street demonstrations and urging others to do the same.

Fourthly, among other cases, we can mention whipping, humiliation, and in many cases, even death under severe torture of prisoners in prison.

Most detainees report being blindfolded and told to persecute themselves and say they were directed by foreign agencies.In Iranian prisons, prisoners are sexually assaulted and, in many cases, tortured due to refusal of forced interviews and forced confessions.

The Islamic Republic arrests lawyers and civil activists who defend the rights of prisoners

Also, the Islamic Republic arrests the mothers of the children who were killed on the street because they are looking for a lawsuit.

Many people who get caught are beaten or raped. Many torturers pray before torture, and they consider this an effort to save Islam and consider it a sacred matter.

The crimes of the Islamic Republic are not limited to recent movements.

For example, Canadian Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi, who was hit on the head and raped in prison, was killed in 2002, and the doctor of the Ministry of Defense announced that the symptoms of severe beating, torture and rape, and bruises on the abdomen, genitals, and legs which indicates brutal sexual assault and whipping, and at the end of a next year, the murderer named Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi was acquitted due to the lack of evidence to prove the charges.

Fifthly, while the protesters don’t have weapons,The police of the Islamic Republic shoot people at point blank range.  

They attack people who have no weapons with weapons such as Kalashnikovs,The Islamic Republic did not and does not take responsibility for any of the killings, while all these were public; This terror is done on purpose to reduce Many people who were beaten and kidnapped or killed by plainclothes forces.

Recently, the Islamic Republic is even blinding the eyes of the protesters.

Human rights organisations have confirmed hundreds of cases of victims whose eyes were targeted in the protestsIn Iranian Kurdistan, doctors have admitted at least 80 people whose eyes were injured.

In a speech, the dictator leader of the Islamic Republic, Khamenei criticised the French government for shooting in the eyes of its protesters and blinding them. He said “The French government is talking about democracy”, while his own government did the same thing to the protesters in his country.

Killing and torturing people who protest peacefully is a crime against humanity.

The Islamic Republic does not allow people commenting on the government to the people and the media. But in their international speeches,they talk about freedom of speech and equal rights of men and women, when it is quite clear that they do not consider such rights for the people of their country.

After killing children and young people, the Islamic Republic does not hand them over to their families. In fact, it steals people’s bodies. They do not allow families to freely bury their children. and asks them to bury their children who were killed by the Islamic Republic without informing the media.

Recently they even have been poisoning children at school

When the girls were poisoned with chemical gases in Afghanistan 8 years ago, the Islamic Republic defended Afghan girls and asked the Taliban to allow girls to go to schools. The poisoning of children in Iran’s schools is very suspicious, and since the government of the Islamic Republic has not taken responsibility for these attacks and has said that these attacks could be the work of the opponents of the Islamic Republic, the organisation or those who easily have power in the entire country and are against going girls to schools.

Last but not least, another example of the crimes of the Islamic Republic is kidnapping foreign travellers and foreign tourists and accusing them of being spies and abusing them to exchange prisoners and get privileges. Currently, the Belgian citizen, Olivier Vandecastel, has been taken hostage.A Belgian citizen named Olivier Vandekastel was taken hostage. With the exchange of prisoners by the Belgian government, it is feared that this case will continue to fulfill the demands of the Islamic Republic.

In summary, the Islamic Republic of Iran is accused of crimes against humanity for the reasons stated above.or this reason, the IRGC, which is the executive arm of these crimes, should be recognized as a terrorist group.

Sousan Jafari

Thanks to the Secular Democratic Group and dear Dr. Abar