Iran protests: Human Rights Council probe condemns online, app-based repression

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The Iranian Government has continued to ramp up efforts to restrict the rights of civilians including young children as part of a concerted effort to crush dissent, investigators mandated by the UN Human Rights Council said on Friday. 

In their latest and final report, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran alleged ongoing serious rights violations by the Iranian authorities stemming from massive protests after the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022.

Ms. Amini, from the Iranian Kurdish community, had been arrested by the country’s “morality police” for allegedly not complying with rules on how the hijab should be worn.

Allegations of crimes against humanity

“In repressing the 2022 nationwide protests, State authorities in Iran committed gross human rights violations, some of which the Mission found to have amounted to crimes against humanity,” said Sara Hossain, Chair of the Fact-Finding Mission.

“We heard many harrowing accounts of harsh physical and psychological torture and a wide range of serious fair trial and due process violations committed against children, including some as young as seven years old.”

Since April 2024, the State has increased criminal prosecution against women who defy the mandatory hijabthrough the adoption of the so-called “Noor plan.”

“Women human rights defenders and activists have continued to face criminal sanctions, including fines, lengthy prison sentences, and in some cases the death penalty for peaceful activities in support of human rights,” the Independent Mission asserted.

Speaking in Geneva on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council, Ms. Hossain noted that Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities “had been specially targeted in the context of the protests”, with “some of the most egregious violations…carried out in peak protest towns in minority-populated regions”.

Testimonies gathered inside and outside Iran for the report which has been shared with the Iranian Government pointed to men, women and children being held “in some cases at gunpoint” with “nooses put around their necks in a form of psychological torture”.

Online surveillance

The Mission – which comprises senior human rights experts acting in an independent capacity – noted that these measures “come despite pre-election assurances” by President Masoud Pezeshkian to ease the strict enforcement of mandatory hijab laws.

This enforcement increasingly relies on technology, surveillance and even State-sponsored “vigilantism”, the investigators stated.

“Surveillance online was a critical tool for State repression. Instagram accounts, for instance, were shut down and SIM cards confiscated, in particular of human rights defenders, including women human rights defenders,” explained the Independent Mission’s Shaheen Sardar Ali.

Vigilantes and intrusive apps

Ms. Ali pointed to the use of the “Nazer” mobile application “which is a particular app that the Government has instituted, where after vetting, sort of normal citizens can also complain – file a complaint – against someone who’s just passed by and hasn’t got the mandatory hijab. So, this technology that’s being used for surveillance is really very far-reaching and highly intrusive.”

According to the Fact-Finding Mission, 10 men have been executed in the context of the 2022 protests and at least 11 men and three women remain at risk of being executed, amid “serious concerns over the adherence to the right to a fair trial, including the use of torture-tainted confessions, and due process violations”.

The Mission’s report will be presented to Member States at the Human Rights Council next Tuesday.

Independent Mission

The Independent Mission was established by the Human Rights Council in November 2022, with a mandate to “thoroughly and independently investigate alleged human rights violations” in Iran related to the protests that began in September that year, especially with respect to women and children.

It was also tasked by the Council to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged violations, as well as to collect, consolidate and analyse evidence of such violations and preserve evidence, including in view of cooperation in any legal proceedings.