Iranian security forces raped and sexually assaulted male and female protesters as young as 12 – with six victims subjected to gang rape by groups of up to 10

Iranian security forces raped and sexually assaulted male and female protesters as young as 12, according to a damning new report.

Amnesty International found that security forces used rape and sexual violence to torture, punish and traumatize protesters arrested as part of the Tehran regime’s crackdown on nationwide protests that broke out from September 2022.

The rights group says it has collected testimonies from 12 women, 26 men, one girl and six boys who survived rape or other forms of sexual violence.

It’s 120 pages report describes 45 cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against demonstrators, in which six victims were raped by groups of up to ten men.

With cases in more than half of Iran’s provinces, Amnesty expressed concern that these documented violations appeared to be part of a “broader pattern.”

“Our investigation shows 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,” said Amnesty Secretary-General Agnes Callamard .

The London-based organization said it shared its findings with Iranian authorities on November 24 “but has received no response to date.”

The protests began in Iran in September 2022 following the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head, but this has always been disputed by Iranian authorities.

After rattling Iran’s clerical leadership, the movement lost momentum toward the end of that year in a fierce crackdown that left hundreds dead, according to rights activists, and thousands arrested, according to the United Nations.

Amnesty said 16 of the 45 cases documented in the report involved rape, including six women, seven men, a 14-year-old girl and two boys aged 16 and 17. Six of them – four women and two men – were gang members. raped by up to ten male officers, the report said.

It said the assaults were carried out by members of the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force, Intelligence Ministry agents and police officers, as the regime in Tehran cleared demonstrators from the streets.

The rapes of women and men were carried out with “wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hoses and/or officers’ genitals and fingers,” the report said.

In addition to the 16 rape victims, Amnesty said it has also documented the cases of 29 victims of other forms of sexual violence, such as beatings on breasts and genitals, forced nudity and the insertion of needles or ice on men’s testicles .

It says it collected the testimonies through interviews with the victims and other witnesses, which were conducted remotely via secure communications platforms.

“The harrowing testimonies we have collected point to a broader pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ arsenal of repression of protests and suppression of dissent to stay in power at all costs,” said Callamard.

A woman, identified only as Maryam, who was arrested and held for two months after removing her headscarf in protest, told Amnesty that she was raped by two officers during an interrogation.

“He (the interrogator) called two others to come in and told them, ‘It’s time,’” she said.

‘They started to tear my clothes. I screamed and begged them to stop.

‘They violently raped me in my vagina with their genitals and raped me anally with a drinking bottle.

“Even animals don’t do these things,” she was quoted by the group.

A man named Farzad told Amnesty that plainclothes officers raped him and another male protester, Shahed, while they were in a vehicle.

He said plainclothes officers made him and other detainees face the walls of the vehicle, where they were given electric shocks, before sexually assaulting them.

“They pulled down my pants and raped me,” he said in his testimony.

‘I couldn’t cry out. “I was really torn apart… I vomited a lot and bled from my rectum when I went to the toilet,” said Farzad, who was released without charge a few days later.

Another woman, Sahar, also told Amnesty how she was attacked and how the experience left her suicidal.

She said security forces took off her clothes and touched her in private parts, mocking her and threatening her with rape.

‘I used to be a fighter in life. Even when the Islamic Republic tried to tear me down, I continued,” she told the rights group. ‘Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about suicide a lot. I’m like someone who waits all day for night so I can sleep.’

Zahra, a woman who was raped by a police officer, also described the psychological toll.

“I don’t think I will ever be the same person again,” she told Amnesty.

“You will not find anything that will bring me back to myself, bring my soul back to me… I hope my testimony will result in justice and not just for me.”

Other victims who spoke to The Guardian newspaper described similar attacks.

Mahdi Yaghoubi, 31, who was arrested in November 2022 during protests in Tehran, told the publication that security officers sexually assaulted him to “confess.”

They touched and pinched my private parts to pressure me to confess,” he said. ‘They didn’t do that to embarrass me or to rape me. They did that as a method of painful torture. They wanted me to suffer and feel the pain.”

He added that the officers would insult him and other prisoners and call him ‘begheyrat’ ​​(a man without self-respect) to humiliate and degrade them.

Yaghoubi said he managed to flee Iran with his sister on the back of a truck.

Amnesty said most victims did not file complaints against the attack for fear of further consequences, and that those who did inform prosecutors were ignored.

“With no prospect of justice at home, the international community has a duty to stand with survivors and pursue justice,” Callamard said.