Reader beware: this one is particularly awful.
The Iranian authorities’ brutal repression of widespread protests includes appalling abuses of children.
A new HRW report documents how the country’s security forces have killed, tortured, sexually assaulted, and disappeared children.
The specific cases are a litany of horrors. I don’t usually go into details of torture in this newsletter, but sometimes it’s necessary to understand just how awful a situation is.
For example, they tortured one boy by shoving needles under his nails.
They beat and sexually assaulted another boy, bruising him all over and causing bleeding from his anus.
A high school student described how security forces pushed her onto a lit gas range during arrest, setting her clothing on fire. They also beat and whipped her during interrogation.
A 16-year-old has tried twice to take his own life after being beaten, electroshocked, and sexually assaulted.
The authorities then failed to provide medical treatment to the children they had injured, even when they broke their bones.
The blatant illegality starts early: security forces often arrest and detain children without notifying their families, sometimes for weeks.
And the abuse of rights continues in the courts. Iranian judges convicted children on vague and absurd charges, and tried them outside of the youth courts that have sole jurisdiction over children’s cases.
An Iranian lawyer said he knew of 28 children who had been charged with “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth,” which can be punished by death or amputation of the right hand and left foot.
What’s more, children keep paying the price even after they are released. Students freed from detention have been barred from returning to school. Authorities have stopped their families’ social welfare payments, resulting in the children having to go to work.
It all adds up to brutality on a wholly different level – a kind of institutionalized sadism against children.
A UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran was established late last year (see Daily Brief, November 25). They should absolutely prioritize investigating these awful abuses.