Amnesty International report: Iranian security forces raped women and children to suppress 2022 uprising

Security forces in Iran used rape and other forms of sexual violence, such as torture and other ill-treatment, to intimidate and punish peaceful protesters during the 2022 Women's Life uprising, Amnesty International said in a published report. this wednesday.

The 120-page report, "I Was Violently Raped": Armed Sexual Violence to Suppress the "Freedom of Women's Lives" Uprising in Iran, documents in detail the horrific suffering of 45 survivors, 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 after their arbitrary arrest for challenging decades of entrenched gender-based oppression and discrimination. To date, Iranian authorities have not charged or prosecuted any officials for the cases of rape and sexual violence documented in the report.

"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 harm on protesters, including children as young as 12 years old. The appalling evidence we have gathered points to a wider pattern of using sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities' armory of suppressing protests and suppressing dissent in order to seize power at any cost," said Amnesty International's Secretary-General. , Agnes Callamard.

"Iran's prosecutors and judges were not only complicit in ignoring or covering up rape survivors' complaints, but also used the 'confessions' to bring false charges against survivors and sentence them to prison or death." The victims are left without a solution and without compensation; only institutionalized impunity, silence and the many physical and psychological wounds that go deep and far," says the AI ??report, among other things.

The report reveals that the perpetrators of rape and other forms of sexual violence included agents from the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij paramilitary force and the Ministry of Intelligence, as well as various branches of the police force including the Public Security Police (policia amniat-e omoumi), the Unit of Iran Police Investigation (agahi) and Special Police Forces (yegan-e vijeh). Survivors included women and girls who had defiantly removed their headscarves, as well as men and boys who took to the streets to express their anger at decades of gender-based discrimination and oppression.

The prevalence of sexual violence during the Women's Lives Rebellion is difficult to estimate, as stigma and fear of retaliation usually lead to underreporting. However, the organization's detailed documentation of 45 cases in more than half of Iran's provinces, along with accounts from other survivors and former prisoners of other cases of rape and other sexual violence against many detained protesters, shows that the documented violations are part of a wider pattern.

Amnesty International shared its findings with Iranian authorities on November 24, but has so far received no response.