Kurds, women and minorities face deadly violence and the systematic suppression of their basic rights in Iran, Amnesty International has said. Their report follows up on the country’s 2022 Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) protests, following the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini which sparked nationwide protests against the country’s mandatory headscarf (hijab) laws and its ruling theocracy. Since then, repression, violence and the use of the death penalty have only increased, the rights watchdog found.
“In the aftermath of the 2022 “Woman Life Freedom” uprising, authorities further suppressed the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, and intensified their crackdown on women and girls defying compulsory veiling laws,” the report notes in its executive summary. Meanwhile, “thousands were subjected to interrogation, arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution, and imprisonment for peacefully exercising their human rights… Cruel and inhuman punishments, including flogging, were imposed… [and] the use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression intensified and executions increased.”
Many of these issues particularly affected the country’s large Kurdish minority, alongside other minority populations including the Baluchis, Turkmen, Azerbaijani Turks and Ahwazi Arabs.
These minorities “faced widespread discrimination, curtailing their access to education, employment, adequate housing and political offices,” Amnesty found.
The rights body particularly noted the crisis in which “Security forces unlawfully killed with impunity dozens of unarmed Kurdish cross-border couriers (kolbars) between the Kurdistan regions of Iran and Iraq, as well as Baluchi fuel porters (soukhtbar) in Sistan and Baluchestan.”
‘Kolbars’ walk for miles carrying heavy packages through minefields and often come under heavy fire from Iranian and Turkish soldiers. According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Association, over the past three years alone, at least 245 Kurds have been killed this way.
Meanwhile, “enforced disappearances, and torture and other ill-treatment were widespread and systematic. Women and girls, LGBTI people, and ethnic and religious minorities were subjected to systemic discrimination and violence.” In particular, Amnesty noted an increase in executions, precipitated in large part by the government’s heavy-handed crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protesters. Executions have increased since 2022, while executions on the basis of allegations of involvement in the drug trade doubled.
“Six young men were arbitrarily executed in relation to the 2022 uprising after unfair sham trials based on torture-tainted ‘confessions’,” as documented by Amnesty. In particular, “The oppressed Baluchi minority made up a disproportionate number of those executed. Several individuals who were below 18 at the time of the crime were executed, including Hamidreza Azari, who was 17 at the time of his execution. Scores of others remained on death row.”
Kurds have also been disproportionately affected by the Iranian state’s execution policy. Earlier this year, Iran executed four Kurds accused of spying for Israel. The executions were carried out despite a lack of evidence linking the men to Israel, abuse of the rule of law, and evidence of torture and maltreatment. Mohsen Mazloum (27), Mohammad Faramarzi (28), Wafa Azarbar (26) and Pejman Fatehi (28), were members of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, a social democratic ethnic political party. The Komala Party issued an official statement calling the claims of the Iranian government groundless and stressing that “such a scenario has been proposed to suppress more people and protesters”.
