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More than 19,000 people have been arrested since protests erupted in Iran in mid-September 2022. Human rights organisations say that dozens of them have been killed in secret detention centres. But security forces are trying to cover up these deaths by threatening family members into silence or staging the deaths as suicides.
Beaten during protests, arrested, tortured and then denied medical treatment: This is how dozens of Iranians have lost their lives during the Islamic Republic’s current wave of unrest, which some are calling the “Mahsa Revolution”.
The protests began on September 16, 2022 after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed while in the custody of the brutal morality police. For months, protesters have been taken to secret detention centres operated by the entities involved in repressing the unrest: the Bassij (the armed branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps), the VAJA (Iranian intelligence service) or ordinary police forces.
The Iranian regime has tried to conceal protesters’ deaths, threatening victims’ families and even arresting some of them.
ویدیویی از آثار ضرب و شتم بر بدن #مهدی_زارع_اشکذری که پس از آزادی به کُما رفت و ۲۰ روز بعد جانباخت.
مهدی دانشجوی دانشگاه بولونیا در ایتالیا بود و در این ویدیو خطاب به سفارت ایتالیا میگوید «ببینید چیکار کردن».#مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/qCotGzuGVg
— Farzad Seifikaran (@FSeifikaran) January 3, 2023
In this video, Mahdi Zare shows the injuries inflicted by security forces during a protest he participated in. The next day, he returned to protest, and was…
