Calls grow in Iran for independent inquiry into protest death toll | Iran
Calls are growing in Iran for an independent investigation into the number of people killed during recent protests after the government said it would monitor the publication of the names of those killed.
The highly unusual government move, announced on Thursday, is designed to thwart allegations that crimes against humanity have been committed and that up to 30,000 Iranians have been killed. The official death toll in Iran announced by the Martyrs Foundation is 3,117, including members of the security forces.
Iranian reformers have said the planned government identification process is not transparent enough and is unlikely to end the dispute over how many people have been killed.
Mohsen Borhani, a law professor at Tehran University and a critic of the Iranian government who served time in Evin prison, said the government’s offer to make public the identities of the dead was a positive development, as in previous major protests Iranians “faced an absolute lack of information about the dead and injured.”
Borhani said the best way to ensure transparency is to create a website and publicize the names of those who died so that “information is not one-sided.”
“Citizens should be able to publicly and openly upload the names and information of the deceased without being identified. The site should then take responsibility for verifying and providing the necessary information about each name announced.”
One of the difficulties is that families are willing to identify themselves as being at risk of death, especially if they insist that their family member was killed by security services.
In an indication that many Iranians believe the death toll is much higher than official claims, the Tehran teachers’ union issued a statement demanding the release of all detainees, claiming: “In less than a week, one of the bloodiest episodes of repression in contemporary Iranian history unfolded. Tens of thousands of children, women, and women were bloodied.”
Reform analyst Ahmad Zeidabadi said distrust between the state and society had become “so deep and wide” that many people no longer accepted official data.
The best solution, he said, would be to allow the United Nations to send an unimpeachable investigative team to Iran.
Writing on his Telegram channel, Zeidabadi asked: “Why not entrust this task to a legitimate international organization so that opposition forces and countries cannot easily raise suspicions about it?”
The Reform Front, an alliance of reformist groups that worked to secure the election of Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian, also called for an independent committee “to investigate this unprecedented disaster and present a transparent and frank report to the Iranian nation.”
Reformist lawyer Ali Mujtahedzadeh said the government must address the root causes of insecurity by building a stronger civil society.
In his first intervention, former president Hassan Rouhani said that the protests led by a generation born and raised in the Islamic Republic showed the need for great change. He called for the establishment of political parties and an end to the filtering of election candidates.
Separately, an unofficial committee has been set up to identify those still detained, as security forces continue their sweep across the country for those they describe as ringleaders of the protests. There is no official number of those detained, but this number is thought to be tens of thousands.
The number of children under 18 in custody has not been disclosed, but education union websites publish photographs of every child confirmed to have been killed. Government officials were also photographed visiting detainees.
Lawyers told Iranian media that the majority of those arrested were born between 1980 and 1985 and were the main breadwinners of the family. Initial sentences range from two to five years. Many come from working-class families and cannot afford the required bail money.
