British MP Advises Westerners To Leave Iran

Female and male victims including some as young as eighteen have told Iran International TV that sexual violence against detained protesters is quite widespread. Their stories are very difficult to verify due to victims’ fear of disclosing personal information and retribution against them and their families.

One of the victims said she and others who were arrested with her were stripped naked in front of male officers at Vali Asr Garrison in Tehran, groped in the genital area, sprayed with cold water, and repeatedly tased to force them to consent to make so-called televised “confessions” against themselves and others. “They threatened us with rape,” the victim who was freed on bail after twenty days said.

“There were two female and two male officers in the van [that took us to Enghelab Police Station]. The men body searched us in the most disgusting manner,” another female victim from Tehran who was arrested with others on Enghelab Avenue said, adding that the male officers told them to shut up when they protested to being touched by them when there were female officers present.

A victim from the religious city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, said she and eleven others were stripped in front of male officers and then forced to squat jump while the officers “frenziedly laughed.” Others have also said officers had groped their backsides and squeezed their breasts during arrest and interrogations. Many say they were threatened with rape or even rape of their family members.

These incidents have been reported from detention centers, prisons, and sometimes in places outside the official system such as warehouses out of town in several major cities including Esfahan, Rasht, Tehran, Karaj, Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Tabriz, Sanandaj, Amol, and Mashhad.

There are some reports of much worse violence. Armita Abbasi, a young woman of 20, was reportedly raped brutally after being arrested on October 10. She was taken to a hospital in Karaj on October 18 by security forces with multiple injuries including internal bleeding, a shaved head, and evidence of repeated rape. Reportedly, they tried to pressure the doctors to attribute the rape trauma evidence to a time prior to her arrest. Her trial, according to her mother, has been scheduled for January 26.

Influential Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid Esmail-Zehi in his Friday sermon December 23 referred to reports of rape and torture of detainees. In a tweet on December 5, Abdolhamid had said the accounts of sexual assault on female detainees to humiliate them or to force them to make false “confessions” against themselves corroborate the allegations made by the media and urged the judiciary to investigate such allegations.

Ladan Boroumand, cofounder and research director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran, told Iran International that the government is using sexual violence to demonstrate that it knows no boundaries when it comes to achieving its goal of suppressing the protest movement, to humiliate the detainees, and to instil fear in other people.

In a report on December 21 entitled “Brutal Repression in Kurdistan Capital”, Human Rights Watch said it has documented serious abuses, including sexual harassment and assault against detainees. Two women arrested together during the first week of protests in September told the global rights watchdog that security forces beat, sexually assaulted, and threatened them with rape during arrest and while they were held at the police station.

SpaceX Chief Executive said in a tweet on Monday that “approaching 100 Starlinks active in Iran”, three months after he confirmed he would activate the service in the country to help Iranians circumvent internet restrictions imposed by the government amid nationwide protests.

Back in September Twitter billionaire had announced he would activate Starlink in Iran as part of the United States effort “to advance internet freedom” and facilitate “the free flow of information” to Iranians.

The Iranian regime has been severely restricting Internet access in general and access to popular social media platforms, such as Instagram, that play a key role in protester communications. These restrictions have caused many problems for those who rely on social media to promote their businesses and hugely damaged e-commerce.

The Islamic Republic has been witnessing mass protests that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in mid-September for wearing what the authorities deem “inappropriate attire.”

The government is extremely nervous that people use the Internet and social media to share news and images about protests, possibly motivating a larger segment of the population to join demonstrations.

Earlier this year, several US lawmakers and the former US official Victoria Coates, who served as senior advisor to the energy secretary in the Trump administration, called on entrepreneur Elon Musk to activate Starlink satellite access for Iranians.

Reports on social media during September and October said that private entities have smuggled Starlink reception equipment into Iran.

Iran has accused Western countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia of fomenting the unrest by people from all walks of life in the country, one of the most sustained challenges to the country's ruling theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Asked by a reporter to comment on Sunday's announcement in Tehran of the arrest of seven people linked to Britain, foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said: "Some countries, especially the one you mentioned, had an unconstructive role regarding the recent developments in Iran.

"Their role was totally destructive and incited the riots."

London’s Metropolitan police detained a man Monday near the office of Iran International under the Terrorism Act after warnings in November that elements connected with Tehran’s intelligence services were trying to target the network’s journalists.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that the seven, including some who held dual nationality, were arrested over anti-government protests that have rocked the country for over three months.

The British foreign ministry had said it was seeking further information from Iranian authorities on the reports that British-Iranian dual nationals had been arrested.

Tehran's allegations of foreign involvement in the protests have been accompanied by arrests of dozens of dual nationals, part of an official narrative designed to shift the blame away from the Iranian leadership.

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said Sunday, “The Legal Medicine Organization announced its comprehensive and expert opinion in this case, but Amini's family filed a complaint against the medical council of the country.”

He added that the complaint has been referred to the medical board for expertise, and the experts of the medical board have not yet announced their final opinion.

The 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, also known as Jina Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran September 16, suffering from severe head trauma after being arrested by Iran’s ‘morality police’ apparently for improper hijab.

Police claimed that she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed, and fell into a coma before being transferred to a hospital. However, eyewitnesses, including women who were detained with Amini, reported that she was severely beaten and that she died because of police brutality, which was denied by authorities.

Mahsa's father, has repeatedly emphasized that “he saw himself that there were traces of blood on his daughter's body, in the back of her neck and ears, and many parts of her body, including her legs, were bruised.”

Family lawyers December 9 issued a statement warning that government insistence on their narrative will damage the transparency of the proceedings.

In a press conference on Sunday, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said one of the “enemies’ plots” in the past few months was breaking the norms and redlines of the Islamic regime. He went on to threaten that people who unveil will be strictly confronted. 

Emphasizing that observing hijab – or Islamic dress code – is legally mandatory, he said, "When the law mandates the observance of hijab for women in public places within the borders of the Islamic Republic, we cannot say that [the issue] is personal."

The law’s Montazeri referred to are what more than 50 percent of the people in Iran oppose, but they have no peaceful way of trying to change them, because the regime considers any such attempt a violation of the fundamental precepts of the clerical rule.

The attorney-general added that he believes the way to deal with those who remove the compulsory hijab "needs planning" and "cultural work” before resorting to legal action. 

He repeated the regime’s propaganda line that describes the current wave of antigovernment protests sparked by death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini as a ploy by the West. The United States, United Kingdom, Israel and Saudi Arabia are called “enemies” in the discourse of the clerical regime.

Mahsa Amini was arrested by a patrol van enforcing hijab on streets and suffered a head trauma during her arrest and died in hospital a few days later, triggering the boldest challenge the regime has faced in its over 40 years of existence. 

Montazeri also claimed that the final results of the investigation regarding the case of Mahsa Amini's death have not yet been given to her family. 

His remarks came as he had earlier pretended it had abolished the the so-called ‘morality police,’. However, his Sunday remarks showed that the whole volte face was only a sham to control the nationwide unrest.

Many activists, such as US-based Masih Alinejad, debunked Montazeri’s claim as a sheer publicity stunt or even misinformation spread by a dictatorial regime that is about to fall. 

Following the propaganda stunt about disbanding the ‘morality police’, foreign and Iranian media are full of interpretations of how the regime plans to both enforce the dress code regulations and at the same time appease protesters.

Western governments, including the UK, the US, and Canada, added the hijab law enforcement unit to their list of sanctioned entities. Despite the regime killing about 500 protesters and hanging two, Iran’s police chief threatened the people earlier in December with more "decisive" response in the coming days.

Many women in Iran are now appearing in public without the mandatory veil and regular police are not interfering in a sign that authorities are either unwilling to risk further confrontation with the public or find it impossible to deal with so many women undermining the rule all at the same time. Police forces have also become over-stretched during protests and many have resigned or have applied for early retirement.