Iranian security forces raped protesters, human rights groups say

Iranian security forces have raped and sexually assaulted numerous detainees arrested during anti-government protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, according to testimony from multiple victims, activists and human rights groups.

One 20-year-old woman was apparently sexually assaulted so violently that she was rushed to hospital with severe injuries soon after her arrest, according to leaked messages between medical staff.

“When she first came in, [the officers] said she was haemorrhaging… due to repeated rape. The plainclothes men insisted that the doctor write it as rape prior to arrest,” a medic at Imam Ali hospital wrote in a message leaked on social media.

“After the truth became obvious to all, they changed the whole script,” wrote the medic in messages first reported by CNN, which was able to verify details of the case with a hospital insider.

The Iranian government later said the woman was treated for “digestive problems”, which medics at the hospital said was inconsistent with the signs exhibited by the woman and by her treatment by a gynaecologist and a psychiatrist.

Morality police

Rights groups and activists have reported numerous accounts of sexual violence against detained protesters as Iranian authorities crack down on a protest movement now in its 10th week after 22-year-old Amini’s death in the custody of Iran’s morality police, after she was detained for “inappropriate attire”.

Protesters angered by the Islamic republic’s strict mandatory hijab laws have demonstrated through cities and towns across the country chanting “Woman, life, freedom”, with many women marching bareheaded.

Protests have been particularly bold in Kurdish areas of Iran, such as Saqqez, the hometown of Amini, an ethnic Kurd. It is also in the Kurdish regions where nearly all reports of sexual violence against detainees have emerged.

Security forces have intensified violence against protesters in the past week, killing 72 people, including 56 in Kurdish areas, Iran Human Rights said on Tuesday. The Norway-based group has counted 416 people killed by security forces nationwide, including 51 children and 21 women.

Iran’s courts have convicted nearly 2500 people of involvement in the Amini protests, the judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday, including handing out six death sentences.

Some confessions relied on by prosecutors have been extracted by interrogators threatening to rape detainees, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, a France-based advocacy group with a network in Kurdish areas of Iran.

Humiliating and punishing detainees

But other instances of sexual assault appear aimed at humiliating and punishing detainees.

One woman said that an interrogator had told her: “If you are raped here, you cannot protest. You are looking for nudity and you have to pay for it.”

Accusing female protesters of wanting to “get naked” has become a common smear against those demonstrating against mandatory public headscarf laws.

Her case was included in a report alleging sexual torture and threats of rape in detention by the Committee to Follow-Up on the Situation of Detainees, an informal network of activists inside Iran.

Investigators have threatened to publish private pictures taken from phones as a method of blackmailing detainees and coerce confessions, the activists said.

CNN also reported that security forces allegedly filmed sexual assaults to blackmail the detainees. The network reportedly verified half a dozen case of detainees being sexually assaulted, including a teenage boy who said he and his friends were raped and given electric shocks in detention.

Human Rights Watch has also collected testimony from detainees who said they were sexually assaulted in detention.