Iran Human Rights Highlights Targeting of Protesters’ Eyes
VOA, September 22, 2023
Iran Human Rights on Friday released its statistical analysis of eye injuries sustained during the crackdown on the 2022 protests. After cross-referencing the injuries with the list of protest-related fatalities, the organization concluded:
“The firing upon women’s faces and eyes by repressive forces
has been highly systematic and deliberate.”
Within Iran, the organization said, about 9% of the fatalities were women, yet women accounted for 28% of the eye injuries. In some areas, however, like Mahabad in West Azerbaijan province, 15% of the protesters killed were women, while they made up 56% of protester eye injuries.
The organization’s “analysis shows that the brutal crimes committed during the protests by the Islamic Republic were planned, coordinated and calculated,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, wrote in the report. “The Islamic Republic leader, Ali Khamenei, and all the perpetrators of such crimes must be held accountable.”
In late November 2022, The New York Times reported on the number of eye injuries in Iran since the nationwide protests began. Ophthalmologists from three major hospitals in Tehran — Farabi, Rasoul Akram and Labbafinezhad — estimated that more than 500 patients with severe eye injuries had been admitted to the three hospitals since mid-September.
Researchers from Iran Human Rights, or IHR, confirmed 138 verified cases related to eye injuries, out of which 43 individuals shared their medical details and documents with the organization under the condition of maintaining their anonymity….
How can anyone take the country of Iran and the ideology of Islam seriously when they treat girls and women so inhumanely. They are more like a godless people than the godly people they pretend to be.
The difference between Christianity and any other religion is 'grace'. Islam is completely devoid of it.
Iranian teen seriously hurt after alleged confrontation
with police over hijab law, activists say
Authorities deny claims by rights groups that Armita Geravand went into a coma
Thomson Reuters · Posted: Oct 04, 2023 7:20 PM PDT |
Iran's state news releases CCTV footage of person pulled off Tehran subway
In unverified video posted by Iran state news agency IRNA Wednesday, CCTV footage from Tehran’s metro appears to show a person boarding a train, and soon after being carried by several people off the train and back onto the platform.
An Iranian teenaged girl is in critical condition in hospital, two prominent rights activists told Reuters on Wednesday, after falling into a coma following what they said was a confrontation with agents in the Tehran subway for violating the hijab law.
Armita Geravand's case is highly sensitive, raising concerns the 16-year-old might face the same fate as Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman whose death in a coma last year in the custody of morality police sparked months of nationwide protest.
While authorities have denied claims by rights groups that Geravand went into a coma on Sunday after a confrontation with officers enforcing the Islamic dress code, Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw posted her picture unconscious at a Tehran hospital where she was taken after the incident.
There was no immediate response from Iran's Interior Ministry to a request for comment.
"We are following her case closely. She is in coma at Intensive Care Unit of the hospital and her condition is critical ... her relatives said there is a heavy presence of plain clothes at the hospital," one of the activists in Iran said.
The second activist said security forces had forbidden Geravand's parents from posting her picture on social media or from talking to human rights groups.
CCTV footage, shared on the state news agency IRNA, showed Geravand without mandatory hijab accompanied by two female friends walking toward the train from the subway platform. Upon entering the cabin, one of the girls is seen immediately backing off and reaching for the ground, before another girl is dragged unconscious from the cabin by passengers.
Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage.
The head of the Tehran Metro Operating Company, Masoud Dorosti, told IRNA the CCTV footage showed no sign of verbal or physical conflict between passengers or company employees.
Of course, the morality police know where the CCTV cameras are and are not.
Journalist arrested
An Iranian journalist was briefly arrested on Monday when she went to the hospital to inquire about Geravand's situation, Iranian media reported.
"Iranian security institutions have said her condition was caused by low pressure — an oft-repeated scenario from such institutions," Iran-based rights group Dadban said on social media.
I suspect that happens after you have been knocked into a coma.
In a video posted by IRNA, her parents said that their daughter had suffered a drop in blood pressure, lost her balance and hit her head inside the subway cabin.
"I think my daughter's blood pressure dropped, I am not too sure, I think they have said her pressure dropped," her mother said. But she added that there was no point in creating controversy.
Rights groups on social media have called on authorities to publish the footage from inside the cabin, claiming that her parents' statement was made under duress.
Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on the social media platform X said: "Once again a young woman in #Iran is fighting for her life. Just because she showed her hair in the subway. It is unbearable."
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said in her own posting on the same platform on Wednesday that "the Iranian regime continues to prove itself as a ruthless and autocratic state with no regards for its own citizens."
In her message, Joly said what happened to the teenager "should not be the status quo for women in Iran. The human rights of the Iranian people must be respected."
Abram Paley, the U.S. deputy special envoy for Iran, expressed shock and concern about the reports on Geravand and said on X that "we continue to stand with the brave people of Iran and work with the world to hold the regime accountable for its abuses".
How does that manifest in anything other than words?
No comments:
Post a Comment