Iran's security forces used a variety of forms of sexual violence to punish peaceful protesters during the 2022 uprising in Iran following the killing of Mahsa Amini, according to a report published Wednesday by Amnesty International.
The report, which refers to the uprising as the "Woman Life Freedom" uprising, detailed the accounts of 45 survivors of sexual violence - 26 men, 12 women, and seven children.
Entitled "They violently raped me:" Sexual violence weaponized to crush Iran's "Woman Life Freedom" uprising, the report stated that the Iranian security forces used rape and other sexual violence to torture protesters, including children as young as 12 years old.
“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 damage on protesters, including children as young as 12," said Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnés Callamard. "The harrowing testimonies we collected point to a wider pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ armory of repression of the protests and suppression of dissent to cling to power at all costs."
According to Amnesty International, Iranian authorities have not brought any of the security officials up on charges for any of the instances of rape detailed in the report.
“Iran’s prosecutors and judges were not only complicit by ignoring or covering up survivors’ complaints of rape," Callamard continued, "but also used torture-tainted ‘confessions’ to bring spurious charges against survivors and sentence them to imprisonment or death. Victims have been left with no recourse and no redress; only institutionalized impunity, silencing, and multiple physical and psychological scars running deep and far.”
The report notes that among the Iranian agents to participate in the rape and sexual violence of protesters were individuals from the Islamic Republic’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Intelligence Ministry, and various branches of the police force.
Horrific reports of brutal sexual assault
Of the 45 cases documented by Amnesty International, sixteen were raped. This figure included seven men, six women, two teenage boys, and a fourteen-year-old girl. Four of these women and two of these men were gang-raped by as many as ten male agents, the report adds.
The sexual assault survivors documented by Amnesty International described to the organization harrowing accounts of their experiences. For many, the prospect of emotional recovery after such an experience seems like an impossibility.
“I used to be a fighter in life,” Sahar, one of the survivors of sexual assault told Amnesty International. “Even when the Islamic Republic tried to break me down, I carried on. However, recently, I think about suicide a lot…I am like a person who waits all day for night-time so I can sleep.”