Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned that Tehran is using rape, sexual violence and torture to suppress dissent, continuing a pattern of violence that followed previous protests.
Content warning: This article contains references and descriptions of sexual violence and torture. Readers are advised to use their own discretion.
France-based NGO Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) revealed on Friday that a child was among two Iranian protesters formerly imprisoned in Kermanshah who claimed they had been sexually assaulted in detention.
“During the transfer, security forces touched their bodies with batons. They beat them in the anal area with batons through their clothes,” KHRN’s Rebin Rahmani told reporters. The Guardian.
Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned after previous protests that Tehran is using rape, sexual violence and torture as part of a pattern of violence to suppress dissent.
Nahid Naghshbandi, acting Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in the aftermath of the deadly crackdown on the 2022 Women, Lives, Freedom protests: “The brutality of Iranian security forces against detained protesters, including rape and torture, is not only a shocking crime but an unjust weapon used against detainees to force them to make false confessions.”
“These practices are also twisted and despicable means to further stigmatize and suppress marginalized ethnic minorities.”
On January 9, 2026, Iranians gathered in the streets during a protest in Tehran, Iran. Nationwide protests began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar against failed economic policies in late December and spread to universities and other cities (Photo: MAHSA/Middle East Pictures/AFP, Getty Images)
Iran detains children, crackdown on protests continues
The network independently identified 20 children and teenagers arrested in Ilam, Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces, while the Coordination Committee of the Iranian Teachers Union reported that at least 100 minors were arrested in Kermanshah province.
The network published the names of 199 people whose fate was unknown and said families of those arrested complained that authorities violently abducted their loved ones without a judicial warrant.
The group said protesters taken from Ilam governorate were transferred to a detention center at the central prison in the city of Ilam, where they were denied legal support and tortured. In the same province, regime forces attacked a local hospital, where they detained injured protesters and stole the bodies of the victims.
The rights group said it was currently investigating multiple reports of protesters being murdered in custody.
Soran Feyzizadeh, 40, was tortured to death in captivity and his family was forced to pay for the return of his body, according to the Hengaw human rights group.
Full picture of human rights abuses in Iran unclear as internet shutdown blocks investigation
Investigations into the well-being of arrested protesters and the atrocities committed by the Islamist regime have been largely disrupted by an internet shutdown imposed by Tehran.
The exact number of people murdered remains unclear, but an Iranian official confirmed to Reuters on Sunday that authorities had confirmed that at least 5,000 people had been killed during protests in Iran.
“The final death toll is not expected to increase significantly,” the official said, blaming Israel and the United States for the violence.
Much like how Tehran buried its nameless victims at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery after the 1979 revolution, human rights activists and groups warn that large numbers of bodies may never be fully identified and buried.
In 2024, the UN special rapporteur noted that Tehran had attempted to destroy the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to “hide or delete data that could serve as potential evidence to avoid legal liability.”
A video obtained by CNN showed families crying as they tried to identify missing relatives among hundreds of bodies in a makeshift morgue at the Karizak Forensic Medical Center. BBC verify confirmed that some of the bodies in bags were marked as unidentified in the video, but it deemed the footage too graphic to share.
