How Iran Forces Targeted And Shot Women Protesters In Faces, Genitals

Iran may have abolished its morality police months after the anti-hijab protests first broke down following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini but the damage that it has done is irreparable, to say the least. For women protesters on the streets, the past few months have been nothing short of hell as they marched forward standing up for rights of their own, unshaken. As protests continue in several forms even today, a shocking report thoroughly studying the pattern of attacks on female protestors discloses details pointing to how the authorities and forces in the country especially carried out target attacks on women.

In an extensive research carried out, several medics including doctors and nurses treating the wounded protesters in secret revealed that they observed a pattern of how most women were shot in their breasts, inner thighs and faces as compared to the men, who were shot on their backs and legs.

Suggested reading: How Iran Women Protests Shaped Due To Policymaking Of The Khamenei Government

Iran Women Protesters Shot In Genitals

In extensive interviews executed across Iran, The Guardian uncovered some shocking facts arising from the anti-hijab protest. The medical professionals including doctors, nurses, assistants and volunteers gave their statements and showed photographic evidence of the women injured during the protests on the streets. While most of these women were being treated in secret, a lot were taken to health centres publicly. While the internet blackdown in the country has hidden several brutalities carried out on the public by the Iranian forces, these medics, who have been treating protestors in private to avoid arrests, disclosed that they observed how a certain pattern of shooting was different for women and men. On one hand, women carried gunshot wounds on their faces breasts, inner thighs and genitals, and the men, on the other hand, carried gunshot wounds on their legs and backs.

The professionals expressed concern over the fact that some people including both women and men carried some grave injuries on their bodies which could leave them permanently damaged for the rest of their lives. A physician from the Isfahan province expressed that he believes the forces compellingly carried out different forms of attacks on women and men and that women were targeted in a manner that would "destroy their beauty and leave them damaged."

"Treated a young woman who was shot in the genitals by gunshots"

The physician uncovered some shocking truths related to the protests. He recalled how he once treated a woman in her early 20s who carried severe gunshot wounds in her genitals. "Ten other shots were in her inner thigh area. While these pellets could be removed easily, the other two in her genitals were wedged in between the vaginal opening and her urethra hence challenging to remove and treat," he told Guardian. Adding that women who had pellets in and around their genitals carried severe, sometimes life-threatening, risks of infections.

The medics were informed that the woman was shot in her genitals and thus by ten security agents who circled her and hit her during the protests.

This was just one out of the hundreds of cases that emerged and the medics treated. The medics, who chose to stay anonymous for their security, revealed that it's not possible that the pattern of shooting women a specific way in specific areas of the body was confident. The attacks, they added, were consistently planned and brutally executed.

While the highest authorities in Tehran have repeatedly denied such allegations and blamed external countries for carrying out terrorist activities amidst their internal conflict, the United Nations Human Rights Council has now launched an investigation to bring forward all those who have been involved in these brutal attacks. Activists believe that Iran is much more capable of carrying out these brutal gender-specific crimes as the country's misogynistic law has always considered women as second-class citizens giving them no rights or value to this day. As per the commission, more than three hundred people, including over forty children, have been put to death so far since the protests broke out.