Amnesty International: Iran committed crimes against humanity during 2022 uprising
Sept. 16 (UPI) — In a report released Wednesday, Amnesty International said Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in a brutal crackdown against protestors in the 2022 Woman Life Freedom uprising.
The report “details how Iranian authorities committed the crimes against humanity of murder, torture, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, rape and persecution on political, gender, ethnic and religious grounds in order to crush the uprising,” the organization said. It released the document on the fourth anniversary of the start of the protests.
“The extensive evidence gathered and analyzed in our report leaves no doubt: Iran authorities … waged a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population demanding dignity, human rights and fundamental political change, pursuant to a state policy of using legal force to obliterate dissent,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
The mass protests began after Mahsa Amini, 22, died in Iranian police custody after she was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s hijab laws. Authorities met the protests with force — one leaked order told police to “respond mercilessly and go as far as causing death.”
“Our report also unveils how crimes against humanity in Iran are sustained by an architecture of impunity built into the country’s constitutional, legislative, political and frameworks,” Callamard said. “The horrifying result has been intensifying cycles of mass protest killings, culminating in the massacres of thousands of protestors within just 48 hours” on Jan. 8 and 9, 2026.
The report, “Architects of Atrocities: State Machinery Orchestrating Crimes Against Humanity in Iran’s 2022 Woman Life Freedom Uprising,” is more than 1,000 pages long. The organization also released “Lives Cut Brutally Short,” a report detailing the deaths of 377 protesters and bystanders, 56 of them children.
Research for the report included interviews with 270 people and analysis of more than 2,000 videos and documents, the organization said.
Callamard called on the United Nations to address the events detailed in the report and also noted that it is published “at a time when people in Iran are also facing the devastating consequences of unlawful attacks by the [United States] and Israel.”
“Amnesty International unequivocally opposes violations of international law by all parties and rejects any attempt to instrumentalize the suffering of victims of human rights violations in Iran to justify unlawful attacks that inflict further civilian harm,” Callamard said.