Four years after Mahsa Amini’s death led to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, Amnesty International has published a report that examines a question largely still unanswered: Who was responsible for the crackdown that allegedly killed hundreds of Iranians?
The answer, according to the human rights group, goes far beyond the officers who confronted protesters in the streets.
The 1,161-page report identifies 87 Iranian officials who Amnesty says should face criminal investigation. They include 62 security force commanders and 25 Interior Ministry officials, from the highest levels of the state down to provincial and local authorities.
Among those named are Ali Khamenei, Iran’s late supreme leader, and Mohammad Bagheri, the former chief of staff of the armed forces. Both were killed at the beginning of the current war.
Amnesty also names Ahmad Vahidi, who was interior minister during the 2022 protests and is now commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Majid Mir Ahmadi, then deputy interior minister for police and security affairs.
Amnesty is not saying that the criminal responsibility of all 87 has been established in court. It says they should be investigated for their alleged roles in crimes against humanity.
The report was published on the fourth anniversary of Mahsa’s death.
Mahsa, also known by her Kurdish name Jina, was a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez in northwest Iran. She was visiting Tehran when the morality police detained her on Sept. 13, 2022, for allegedly violating Iran’s compulsory hijab rules. She collapsed after being taken into custody and died in hospital three days later.
Iranian authorities said she died of natural causes. A U.N. fact-finding mission later concluded that Mahsa had been subjected to physical violence that led to her death and that the state was responsible.
Mahsa’s death brought protesters onto the streets, first in Kurdish areas and then across Iran. Women removed their headscarves. University students joined demonstrations. “Woman, Life, Freedom,” a slogan with roots in the Kurdish women’s movement, became the defining cry of an uprising whose demands soon went beyond compulsory hijab.
The response was deadly.
Amnesty says its researchers interviewed 270 people and examined more than 2,000 videos, as well as court records, forensic documents, official statements and leaked government documents.
The organization documented the deaths of 377 protesters and bystanders, including 56 children.
Amnesty documented 106 Baluchi protesters and bystanders killed in Sistan and Baluchistan Province in southeastern Iran, including 20 children. Another 95 Kurdish protesters and bystanders were killed in Kurdistan, Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan provinces, including 13 children.
Amnesty says that the violence was not simply the result of decisions made by individual officers. It says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and Iran’s police command, known as Faraja, led many of the operations and carried out policies developed through national, provincial and county security councils.
Among the documents cited by Amnesty is a leaked order that instructed security forces to “respond mercilessly and go as far as causing death.”
The abuses documented in the report include killings, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, rape and other sexual violence, and persecution.
Amnesty says they were crimes against humanity.
Iranian authorities have given a very different account of the 2022 unrest, blaming much of the violence on rioters, armed groups and foreign enemies.
Amnesty says authorities acknowledged 202 deaths but attributed most of them to non-state actors. The organization says it contacted Iran’s supreme leader and senior security officials before publishing the report but received no response.
Amnesty is calling on the U.N. General Assembly to establish an international criminal justice mechanism and on the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation in Iran to the International Criminal Court.
Iran is not a member of the court, so the ICC does not automatically have jurisdiction over crimes committed there.
Four years later, the movement has also left a more visible legacy inside Iran.
On Sept.16, shopkeepers went on strike in Saqqez and several other Kurdish cities to mark the anniversary. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported closures in Saqqez, Sanandaj, Mahabad, Bukan and other cities despite threats against some businesses and a heightened security presence.
But perhaps the clearest change can be seen in what started the protests in the first place: the hijab.
Although compulsory hijab remains the law, women without headscarves have become a common sight in Tehran and other cities. Recent videos from Tehran also show women at cafes and other public spaces wearing clothes that were less likely to be seen before the uprising.
The change has become the subject of political debate in Iran, even as its war with the United States and Israel continues. Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Parliament, recently complained about how much people’s appearance had changed. His remarks prompted a response from the Iranian news site Tabnak, which argued that officials were focusing on women’s hijab while people were struggling with rising prices, poverty and other problems.
Majid Ansari, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s vice president for legal affairs, said this month that the tougher hijab law passed by Parliament had “serious problems” and that many of its provisions could not be enforced. He said the government had examined the law not only from a legal point of view, but also for its possible effects on society and internal security.
According to Ansari, officials concluded that implementing the law could create problems for people’s livelihoods and for social cohesion.
The crackdown stopped the mass demonstrations. But it did not return Iranian society to where it was before Amini’s death. That, too, is part of Mahsa Amini’s legacy.
