As the Council meets for this special session, the people of Iran remain in darkness under a near total communications blackout, deliberately imposed by the regime to conceal a massacre of its own people. With the Iranian authorities continuing their deadly crackdown, ARTICLE 19 urges the international community to take urgent measures to ensure accountability for repeated crimes under international law.
We deplore the lethal repression of this new wave of protests, with tens of thousands of people killed and imprisoned by the authorities simply for taking to the streets to call for democracy, freedom, justice, and respect of their human rights.
We are horrified by reports of security forces raiding already overwhelmed hospitals, deploying teargas and beating patients, their families, and medical personnel, while attempting to arrest the injured protesters and seize the bodies of those killed.
The regime’s policy of mass detention has been facilitated by broadcasting coerced statements from detained protesters on social media, often before any trial and following credible reports of abuse, in flagrant disregard of the rule of law.
We express our full support for the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran to carry out an urgent inquiry into these international crimes to collect and preserve evidence for use in legal proceedings, and call for all resources necessary be allocated to the mandate to carry out its investigations.
We urge States to put urgent diplomatic pressure on the Iranian authorities to stop the bloodshed and restore access to the internet. In light of the systemic impunity which has emboldened Iranian authorities to repeatedly commit crimes under international law, we urge States to initiate investigations under the principle of universal jurisdictions to hold those responsible to account.
Finally, we call on States and private companies that use satellite internet connections to use all avenues to find a permanent and sustainable solution to help maintain connectivity. This includes strict export bans on military-grade jamming technology to Iran to break the regime’s communications blackout.