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Iran’s security forces are raiding hospitals and arresting wounded suspected protesters — including actors and athletes — in the nation’s latest crackdown on the anti-government movement.
Security forces have stormed hospitals as they carry out mass arrests across multiple cities, detaining patients receiving treatment for suspected protest-related injuries, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Those swept up in the ruthless clampdown include actors, athletes, business owners, lawyers, human rights activists and more — all accused of protesting the regime amid a collapsing economy.
“We have indications that the security forces made mass arrests in several cities, even pursing injured people into hospitals, and detaining lawyers, human rights defendants, activists, and ordinary civilians,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk charged during an urgent council session in Geneva Friday.
“The Tehran Prosecutor’s Office has reportedly opened criminal cases against athletes, actors, people involved in the movie industry, and the owners of cafes, on charges of supporting the protests. I call on the Iranian authorities to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression.”
Turk condemned forces of using live ammunition on protesters, killing “thousands of people, including children,” since imposing a near-total internet blackout on Jan. 8 to conceal the relentless massacre.
Former UN prosecutor and Iranian-Canadian lawyer Payam Akhavan called for a “Nuremberg movement” during the meeting, referencing the post-World War II trials in which Nazi leaders were prosecutors and sentenced to death for their atrocities.
“This is the worst mass murder in the contemporary history of Iran,” he said.
While Iran’s UN ambassador Ali Bahreini reported about 3,000 deaths in the unrest, a UN human rights experts warned Tehran’s crackdown on anti-regime protesters has resulted in up to 20,000 Iranian demonstrators being killed.
The council approved a motion extending and mandating investigations into the Islamic Republic brutalizing its populace and urged Tehran to cooperate fully with the probe.
Seven countries, including China and India, voted against the resolution, while 25 nations, including France, Mexico, and South Korea, voted in favor. Fourteen countries abstained.
The protests, which exploded on Dec. 28, spread rapidly across all 31 provinces, morphing from demonstrations over a collapsing economy into the most serious threat to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The regime answered with overwhelming force, deploying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Basij militia to crush the unrest, according to rights groups and witness accounts.
Leaked images have since shown the bodies of hundreds of victims piled inside and outside morgues.
President Trump announced Thursday that at least 132,000 tons of US Navy hardware is steaming toward Iran — including the nuclear-powered USS Abraham Lincoln and three guided-missile destroyers.
The commander in chief told reporters during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that “maybe we won’t have to use” the carrier strike group but that the US had “a lot of ships” going in Iran’s direction “just in case.”
Trump also called for the removal of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said a 25% tariff will be slapped on any nations doing business with Iran — including China and the United Arab Emirates.
With Post wires
English (US)