The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Mai Sato, urged the international community to back an expanded United Nations investigation into alleged abuses linked to Iran’s protests, saying accountability was essential.
“Now is the time for the international community to respond and to support the people of Iran in their pursuit for fundamental rights and accountability,” Sato told the UN Human Rights Council on Friday.
A proposal before the Geneva-based body seeks to extend by two years the mandate of a UN investigation launched in 2022 after a previous wave of protests and to open an urgent inquiry into violations linked to unrest that began on Dec. 28, for possible future legal proceedings.
Sato said Iran’s near-total internet shutdown had obscured the true scale of the violence.
She said she had received reports of the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters, mass detentions including of schoolchildren, raids on hospitals and coercion of detainees into false confessions.
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Iran has deployed a nationwide militarized crackdown to scotch dissent and obscure the scale of its mass killings of protestors earlier this month, rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report on Friday.
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UN Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Turk on Friday urged Iranian authorities "to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression, including summary trials and disproportionate sentences."
Security forces pressured Iranian medical staff to aid the crackdown by controlling hospitals and altering records to downplay gunfire deaths, a healthcare worker told Iran intenrational. Bodies were piled, removed by truck, and sometimes buried without rites, with files changed to mask causes of death.
More than 36,500 people were killed during Iran’s January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to classified government documents reviewed by Iran International.
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