GENEVA, Switzerland — The
UN on Tuesday denounced Iran’s
increasingly harsh and deadly crackdown on mass protests that have been rocking
the country for more than two months.
اضافة اعلان
“UN Human Rights
Chief
Volker Turk says the rising number of deaths from protests in Iran,
including those of two children at the weekend, and the hardening of the
response by security forces, underline the critical situation in the country,”
spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva.
“We urge the
authorities to address people’s demands for equality, dignity, and rights, instead
of using unnecessary or disproportionate force to suppress the protests,” he
said.
“The lack of
accountability for gross human rights violations in Iran remains persistent and
is contributing to the growing grievances.”
His comments
came after Iranian security forces on Monday intensified their crackdown in
western Iran’s Kurdish-populated regions, directly shooting at protesters,
using heavy weapons and killing a dozen people over 24 hours, rights groups
said.
The
Kurdish-populated provinces of western and northwestern Iran have been hubs of
protest since the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on
September 16, after she was arrested by morality police in Tehran.
Hundreds killed
The demonstrations sparked by Amini’s death have become the most
serious challenge to Iran’s clerical regime since the 1979 revolution.
The UN rights
office said more than 300 people had been killed since the protests began,
including more than 40 children.
The Norway-based
Iran Human Rights (IHR) group on Saturday put the death toll at least 378
people.
There have been
particularly intense anti-regime demonstrations in several towns in the last
few days, rights groups say, largely sparked by the funerals of people said to
have been killed by the security forces in previous protests.
Laurence said
sources had told the rights office that more than 40 people had been killed in
mainly Kurdish cities in the past week.
Two 16-year-old
boys were among six killed over the weekend, he said.
“Significant
numbers of security forces have also been deployed in recent days,” he said,
adding: “Overnight, we received reports of security forces responding
forcefully to protests in several mainly Kurdish cities, including Javanrud and
Saqqez.”
Since the
beginning, he said, “protesters have been killed in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces,
including more than 100 in Sistan and Baluchistan”.
Withholding bodies
Laurence voiced particular concern at “the authorities’ apparent
refusal to release the bodies of those killed to their families, or making the
release of their bodies conditional on the families not speaking to the media
or agreeing to give a false narrative on the cause of death.”
He also pointed
to the thousands of people “detained throughout the country for joining
peaceful protests”, adding that a growing number of Iranian celebrities and
sports stars who had voiced support for the protests were being summoned and
arrested.
Especially
alarming, he said, was that so far six people connected to the protests had
been handed death sentences.
“We call on the
authorities to release all those detained in relation to the exercise of their
rights, ... and to drop the charges against them,” Laurence said.
“Our office also
calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately impose a moratorium on the
death penalty and to revoke death sentences issued for crimes not qualifying as
the most serious crimes under international law.”
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
