Human Rights Group Counts at Least 201 Dead in Iran Protests, Including 23 Children

Iran Human Rights (IHR), a group based in Oslo, Norway, said on Tuesday that at least 201 people have been killed during the Iranian regime’s “bloody crackdown” on the Mahsa Amini uprising.

IHR said 93 of the fatalities occurred in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which erupted in protests after a police officer allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl during a murder investigation. The embattled police force took several of the rape victim’s relatives hostage to pressure the family into withdrawing its allegations.

Many of the remaining deaths were in Iranian Kurdistan, the region from which 22-year-old Mahsa Amini made her doomed journey to Tehran last month to visit her relatives. Amini was abducted and killed by Iran’s “Guidance Patrol” or “morality police” because she supposedly allowed a lock of hair to peep from beneath her mandatory Islamic headscarf.

Iranian officials unconvincingly claim Amini died of natural causes after the Guidance Patrol stuffed her in a van and carted her off to a grim detention center. Her family insists she had no such life-threatening health problems. Women cutting off locks of their hair has become an international gesture of solidarity with Amini and the other oppressed women of Iran.

The protests currently sweeping all of Iran originated in Kurdistan, with allegations that the thuggish morality police went especially hard on Amini because she was Kurdish.

Sistan-Baluchistan is also home to an ethnic and religious minority that complains of persecution by the theocratic Iranian state, the Baluch. September 30 has become known as “Bloody Friday” in the Sistan-Baluchistan capital of Zahedan due to the large number of protesters killed on that date.

“Iran Human Rights has been able to confirm five deaths in Kurdistan over the past days. The city of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province has witnessed widespread protests and bloody crackdowns in the past three days. The current number of confirmed deaths does not include those that have been killed in Sanandaj over the last three days,” the human rights group reported.

“The international community must prevent further killings in Kurdistan by issuing an immediate response,” said IHR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

IHR was concerned that the regime’s brutal suppression is targeting students, including children under 18 years of age. Students have been a driving force in the uprising, with college and younger girls making courageous gestures of defiance, including getting rid of their hijabs entirely.

According to IHR’s analysis, suppressing student protests is “a priority for the state,” and its security forces are visiting schools to arrest dissident pupils. 

On Tuesday, Iranian Education Minister Yousef Nouri admitted in a newspaper interview that student protesters are being detained by security forces and sent to “psychological institutions.”

“It is possible these students have become ‘anti-social characters’ and we want to reform them,” Nouri said.

“Iran Human Rights has further received numerous reports of the mass arrests of protesters and civil society activists who have been identified by intelligence agencies,” the group added. 

“The use of torture and ill-treatment against protesters has been widely reported, with at least two deaths in custody. Families have told Iran Human Rights that their loved ones are under pressure to force televised confessions,” IHR said.