Statement by Sara Hossain, Chairperson of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran

Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates, 
Observers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful for the opportunity to address the Human Rights Council today, on behalf of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFMI), together with my fellow members, Professor Shaheen Sardar Ali (from Pakistan), and Viviana Krsticevic (from Argentina).

In November 2022, the Council established this Mission to investigate “the alleged human rights violations in Iran in connection with the protests that began there on 16 September 2022, especially with respect to women and children”.

During our oral update last July, we made clear to the Council that we would go wherever the evidence led us. In that spirit we have carried out a thorough and independent investigation over the past year into the alleged violations and the surrounding facts and circumstances.

From the outset, we sought in good faith to engage with the Government of Iran. Regrettably, however, the Government did not grant the Mission access to the country, nor respond to calls for meetings, nor to the 21 detailed letters of inquiry, sent up to January 2024.  At the same time, the Government of Iran’s continued and extensive restrictions on online communications, including surveillance, harassment and intimidation of victims and their families, inhibited people from coming forward for fear of reprisals. The Mission therefore also took an approach of extreme caution, following the “do no harm” principle.

Despite these challenges, the Mission ultimately collected and preserved over 27,000 evidence items. It conducted a total of 134 in-depth interviews with victims and witnesses, including 49 women, and 85 men, both inside and outside the country, and gathered evidence and analysis from experts on digital and medical forensics, and domestic and international law, among others. The Mission closely reviewed the Government of Iran’s official documents, including public statements of officials, alongside 41 reports of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights (received by other UN bodies), and also held exchanges with Iran’s “Special Committee to investigate the 2022 Unrests”.  

The Mission’s findings thus stand on a methodologically sound foundation, supporting the conclusions in our report and the conference room paper issued today.

Mr. President

Today, as we speak, gross human rights violations and international crimes, including in the context of armed conflicts, are being committed across the globe, and devastating the lives of thousands of civilians. These situations - rightfully - dominate the headlines. The Human Rights Council has a crucial role to play in responding to these violations, and ensuring truth, justice, accountability, and reparations for all victims. It must uphold through its own practice the principle of universality of human rights, and eschew double standards.

However, in doing so, the Human Rights Council must not turn away from confronting violations where victims are no longer in the spotlight, as in Iran, and where the reasons for its establishing an investigative mandate continue to be operative.  Double standards also come into play when states suppress the rights of their people at home while speaking of international justice. Repression in Iran is ongoing while the world’s attention is turned elsewhere, against the women and men who sought change and continue to seek justice.

Mr President,

 The Mission found that State authorities in Iran were responsible for egregious human rights violations in connection with the protests that started on 16 September 2022. These include unlawful deaths, extra-judicial executions, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary arrests, torture and ill-treatment, rape and sexual violence, enforced disappearances and gender persecution. These acts were conducted in the context of a widespread and systematic attack against women and girls, and other persons expressing support for human rights. The Mission found that some of these serious violations of human rights thus rose to the level of crimes against humanity, including murder, torture, rape, and also gender persecution, intersecting with ethnicity and religion.

Let me turn now to inform you of our findings. Firstly, regarding the fate of Jina Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman whose death in custody of the “morality police” sparked the protests that September two years ago. Our investigation established that her death was unlawful and caused by physical violence in the custody of State authorities.

Following Jina Mahsa’s death, protests were sparked across the country and grew into what we now know as the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. Young women and school children were at the forefront, with many removing their hijab in public places as an act of defiance against long-standing discriminatory laws and practices. Men and boys joined in solidarity, along with people from diverse backgrounds, including minorities, demanding equality, justice, and social and political reforms and articulating long-standing grievances.

In response, the entire State apparatus mobilized to supress the mounting demands for basic and fundamental human rights.

During the protests, the security forces used firearms, including assault rifles, as well as metal pellets and paintball guns, and AK47s, causing deaths and extensive injuries.

The use of such unnecessary and disproportionate force on largely peaceful protests, resulted in unlawful killings and injuries of protesters resulting in credible figures of 551 deaths, among them at least 49 women and 68 children, in 26 out of the 31 provinces in Iran. There were disproportionately high numbers in minority-populated regions. On just one day, 30 September 2022, “Bloody Friday”, in Zahedan city, Sistan and Baluchestan province, credible information indicates that security forces killed 103 protesters and bystanders, mostly men and boys, the highest number of deaths documented within a single day during the entire duration of the protests.  

The Mission acknowledges the Government’s claim that some 54 security forces were also killed and many others injured. The Mission requested information from the Government about the circumstances of those deaths, in order to investigate these situations last June, but has till today received no response to enable it to assess those claims in accordance with its methodology.

Mr. President,

As you may have seen, widespread images of protesters wearing a white protective patch over one or both of their eyes became a hallmark of the 2022 protests. This didn’t happen by chance. The Mission found a pattern of security forces targeting their firearms towards vital body parts of protesters and bystanders, including their faces, heads, necks, torsos, and genital area. Victims with multiple pellets in their bodies also remained without access to medical care, sometimes for months after the injury, with some continuing to receive threats when they spoke up about their injuries. A woman protester, who was blinded in one eye, was told by security forces that they would “hunt her down and come for her other eye”.

Mr. President,

Security forces also carried out mass arbitrary arrests of protesters. The Government of Iran itself announced that 22,000 people were pardoned in connection with the protests, suggesting that many more were detained or charged. 

Women and men, boys and girls, were viciously beaten and arrested while dancing, chanting, writing slogans, or honking car horns in peaceful acts of solidarity. Upon apprehension, security forces transferred detainees en masse in a coordinated manner to unofficial detention facilities run by the Ministry of Intelligence, Basij and the Revolutionary Guards. As we heard from witnesses, while in detention,manyprotesters, including women and children, were held incommunicado, in inhumane detention conditions, subjected to prolonged solitary confinement which stripped basic facets of their dignity. Security forces deprived them from contacting families or lawyers and put them out of the reach of the law, in some cases in conditions amounting to enforced disappearances. To punish, humiliate or extract a confession from them, detainees were often subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape and rape with an object, as well as beatings, flogging, or electric shocks, in acts that constitute torture. Security forces sought to punish women in particular for their participation in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, justifying the use of sexual violence on the basis that this was the “freedom they wanted”.  

Children were subjected to extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and held in detention along with adults. Others were brought to juvenile detention centres or mental health facilities aimed at “reforming” them.

Trials were marred by systematic violations of due process.  Most persons tried in connection with the protests were brought before Revolutionary Courts, on vague charges of “corruption on earth” or “waging war against God” in relation to protected conduct or speech. Many were denied access to counsel of their choice, and not able to access their case files, or copies of their judgements. Judges manifested clear bias against protesters, systematically dismissing complaints of rape, torture and ill-treatment.

At least nine young men were arbitrarily executed, following hasty and flawed proceedings that disregarded basic fair trial and due process guarantees, creating terror among other protestors. By January this year, Iranian courts had pronounced at least 26 death sentences against persons in relation to the protests.

Mr. President,

A year and a half since the protests began, the Government of Iran has yet to acknowledge or recognise the grievances that brought protesters to the streets in September 2022. Not only does accountability remain elusive for people, but the Government takes concerted measures to silence victims and their families seeking truth and justice. It has also targeted those supporting them, including around 100 journalists who have been arrested for covering the protests, and lawyers, who have been summoned, arrested, convicted, suspended from the bar, and harassed by the authorities, preventing them from representing protesters.

Authorities have taken concerted action to conceal the truth about the killings and to silence the grieving families of killed protesters. They have also systematically threatened, intimidated, assaulted, or arrested family members simply for mourning their loved ones and for speaking out to demand justice. One relative of a protester who had been killed told us: “We are not even allowed to mourn, which compounds our anguish… not a single person has been arrested in connection with the killing over the past year. Yet, within the same period, several members of my family have been arrested.”

A year and a half on, women and girls are still confronted daily by discrimination in law and in practice affecting virtually all aspects of their private and public lives. We are receiving chilling reports on the use by the State of artificial intelligence, including through new mobile apps, to monitor and enforce compliance by women and girls with mandatory hijab rules. It is hard to fathom that in the 21st century, women’s access to the most basic services and opportunities, such as schools, universities, hospitals, and courts, or to opportunities for employment in government or other sectors, should be subjected to a wholly arbitrary requirement of wearing the mandatory hijab. Whether a woman or a girl chooses to wear a hijab or not cannot determine her access to fundamental rights and freedoms.  

Mr. President,

The primary responsibility and duty to protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms lies with the State. In the context of Iran – however – historical and systemic impunity has robbed a society of any hopes for justice and redress. Witnesses consistently asked us what the outcome of a complaint might be, noting that it would be the protesters themselves who would ultimately be “prosecuted”.

The courage of the victims, witnesses, and family members who have entrusted to us their stories, underscores the need for the international community to demonstrate solidarity, and to match this with concrete measures of support to victims, including by exploring avenues for justice.  

Without holding accountable the perpetrators of the violations in the context of the protests that started on 16 September 2022, the cycle of impunity cannot be broken.  We urge the Government of Iran to take immediate and concrete measures to halt executions, promptly release all those arbitrarily detained in connection with the protests, including women arrested for defying the mandatory hijab, cease judicial harassment of victims and their families, provide them with redress, truth, justice and reparations and dismantle and disband the persecutory system of the enforcement of these laws and policies. 

I thank you for your attention.