The human rights organization Amnesty International has documented cruel torture of children and adolescents six months after the beginning of the latest wave of protests in Iran. Protesters were subjected to beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence by intelligence and security agencies, Amnesty reported in a report published on Thursday night.
According to Amnesty, the violence was aimed at suppressing the country's youth and breaking their protest. Dieter Karg, Iran expert at Amnesty in Germany, said: "It is abhorrent that officials abuse their power in this way against vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anxiety on them and their families, and leaving them with severe physical and mental scars."
Especially younger people protest
Amnesty documented violence from the time of the arrest, where children and young people were beaten in the prison transporters and tortured in the detention centres. These included electric shocks to genitals, forced administration of unknown tablets and severe threats. Before they were released, state officials often threatened the children with arrest of their relatives if they complained.
According to Amnesty International, children under the age of twelve were also tortured. The human rights activists base their report on testimonies from dozens of detainees and relatives. In view of the predominantly young protesters, Amnesty estimates that thousands of children were imprisoned. Just a few days ago, Iran's judiciary revealed that at least 22,000 demonstrators had been arrested. The majority of the protesters are said to have been released in the meantime. There are no exact figures from the state.
The trigger for the latest wave of protests in Iran was the death of the Iranian Kurd Jina Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old was arrested in mid-September by the moral guardians for violating Islamic dress codes and died a few days later in police custody. At the beginning, the protests were directed against the headscarf obligation. Later, the protesters demanded the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. In the meantime, the political and spiritual leadership is once again self-confident.
Especially the young generation protested recently. The majority should not have been older than 25 years. Since the wave of protests in the autumn, Iran's leadership has been under pressure as never before since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Even months after the uprisings, many women continue their protest in other forms, for example by demonstratively ignoring the headscarf obligation.
Amnesty called for the release of the detained children and appealed to the international community: "Since there is no prospect of effective impartial investigations into the torture of children in Iran, we call on all states as well as the German government to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian officials," said Dieter Karg of Amnesty.