Iran committed crimes against humanity during protest crackdown, UN says | Human Rights News [Video]

Tehran’s violent crackdown on peaceful protests and discrimination against women and girls triggered serious rights violations, many amounting to crimes against humanity, a United Nations fact-finding mission has concluded.

Iran was rocked by widespread demonstrations set off by the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rule for women.

Anger over her death rapidly expanded into weeks of taboo-breaking protests in an open challenge to Iran’s system of government under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In November 2022, the UN Human Rights Council created a high-level investigation into the deadly crackdown.

In its first report, the independent international fact-finding mission on Iran said on Friday that many of the violations uncovered “amount to crimes against humanity – specifically those of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts”.

It added that the …