Police in Iran using sexual violence in security crackdown, say activists

On the evening of 15 October 2022, when the street protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini were at their peak, 25-year-old Dorsa* was stopped at a checkpoint while driving through a city in the country’s northern Gilan province.

The checkpoint was chaotic; 25 to 30 heavily armed security officers were shouting and screaming at people to get out of their vehicles.

Dorsa was with her sister and two male friends. Their car was searched and when two cans of spray paint were found in her sister’s bag, all hell broke loose.

The sisters say they were blindfolded and had their hands tied behind their back before they were pushed into a police car. Dorsa says they were taken to a building where they were forced to sign a confession saying they had been protesting, before being separated. Alone in an interrogation room, Dorsa says she could hear the screams of her two male friends being tortured nearby. When it was her turn to be interrogated, Dorsa says she was beaten and punched repeatedly while security forces screamed that she was a whore and a traitor. She says she was force-fed the little plastic balloons that protesters had been filling with red paint to use against police. They] covered my face with my scarf and I couldn’t see anything.

I was stripped naked and told that a lady doctor would come into the room and examine me. Minutes later, someone came to the room and when they touched me, I knew it was a man,” she says.

“He kept touching me everywhere and then tookan object and inserted it inside my vagina. He kept penetrating me with the object, while with the other hand, he was rubbing all over my body. I froze and was still in pain from the punches I had received during interrogation. Ilay there for I don’t know how long. He then left.”