Iranian expatriates rally in Sweden. UN human rights watchdog accuses Iranian authorities of repressing minorities Human Rights
Ethnic and religious minorities in Iran, particularly the Kurdish and Baloch minorities, have suffered disproportionately from government crackdowns on protesters since 2022, a direct result of long-standing discrimination, according to a report released Monday by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran.
The report documents a number of gross human rights violations committed by Iranian security forces against minorities. These include killings, extrajudicial killings, unnecessary use of force, arbitrary arrests, torture, rape, enforced disappearances and gender-based persecution.
Children belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, it says in the report, were subject to particularly egregious repression in the context of the protests, including killing and maiming, arrests, enforced disappearances, detention, as well as torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
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Mass protests were sparked by the death in custody of Gina Mahsa Amini in September 2022. The 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman was arrested by the “morality police” for allegedly failing to comply with Iran’s compulsory hijab laws.
The heavy military presence of security forces in border provinces populated by minorities, the authors of the report note, created the ground for the Iranian authorities to actively suppress the protests. As a result, ethnic and religious minorities suffered the most. The victims included ethnic Kurds and Baloch, Azerbaijani Turks and Ahwazi Arabs, a Sunni minority in a predominantly Shia country.
The subsequent trials were marred by due process violations, according to human rights defenders, with a sharp increase in executions recorded following the protests, particularly in minority-populated areas.
The report highlights that two years after the protests began, the Mission is not aware of any criminal investigations into high-ranking officials in connection with abuses committed against minorities in the wake of the mass protests.