With anti-regime protests sweeping across Iran for nearly a month, Iranian security forces were caught sexually assaulting women protesters, the video evidence shows.
“In two recent videos verified by the BBC, security forces who are forcefully trying to arrest female protesters appear to be sexually assaulting them,” the BBC reported Friday.
One of the incidents was recorded in Iran’s capital Tehran, where a “woman is seen being detained and taken towards a motorbike in a busy street crowded with police,” the UK newspaper Daily Mail noted. “Once she is surrounded on all sides by four armoured cops, one of them appears to grabs her inappropriately with a strong hand. She then crumples to the floor,” the daily added.
The BBC reported the incident:
It seems that the Iranian authorities are walking in a minefield. With every step they take they cause more fury.
As well as the violent crackdown of the protesters, bashing their heads on pavements and dragging them on the ground, two recent videos in particular have caused an uproar.In at least two videos, security forces who are forcefully trying to arrest female protesters appear to be sexually assaulting them.Even the hardcore supporters of the government are shocked. They say that Islamic rules were meant to protect the sanctity of women – but the forces of the Islamic Republic are now sexually harassing them.
The treatment of women in Iran is a central issue in the protests which began four weeks ago. Nationwide demonstrations erupted on September 13 following the death of a 22-year-old Iranian woman in the custody of country’s morality police. The young women, named Mahsa Amini, was detained and allegedly tortured by the regime’s Sharia-enforcers for violating Islamic dress code.
The regime responded with deadly force to quell pro-democracy protests. Around 244 people, including 21 children, have been killed and close to six thousand arrested, rights groups estimate.
As protests hit cities across Iran, the security forces have been reinforced by members of the dreaded Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Shia-Islamic regime’s loyalist armed wing. Sky New (UK) reported Saturday that “officers from the military Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been reported as operating in the region wearing police and riot police uniforms in recent days.”
This is not an isolated incident of sexual assault by some rogue elements within the Iranian security apparatus. The regime, which brutally enforces Hijab and “modest” Islamic dress code, systematically uses rape as a weapon against female dissidents. As British newspaper The Guardian reported in 2011: “Prison guards in Iran [were] giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them.”
Despite the regime’s appalling track record, Iran sits on the United Nation’s Women Rights Commission. In April 2021, Iran was elected to this UN agency, which purports to advance “gender equality and the empowerment of women” in the world, joining leading rights abusers such as China, Cuba, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
As Hillel Neuer, head of the watchdog organization UN Watch noted, the UN Human Right’s body has been silent on Iran’s brutal suppression of protests.
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