Amnesty International accuses Iran of committing "crimes against humanity" during the suppression of the 2022 protests

Amnesty International accused the Iranian authorities of committing “crimes against humanity” during the crackdown on the 2022 protests, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, in a report published on Wednesday to mark the fourth anniversary of the protest movement that began following the death of Mahsa Amini.

The human rights organization specifically pointed to killings, torture, rape, and cases of enforced disappearance, while confirming that the crackdown on the recent wave of popular protests in early 2026 followed the same pattern, but on a “more bloody and horrific” scale.

In this document of more than 1,000 pages, the organization held 87 Iranian officials accountable for these crackdowns and identified at least 377 victims.

Some of these officials, including former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes that ignited the war in the Middle East in late February last year. However, others, including Ahmad Vahidi (Minister of the Interior in 2022 and current commander of the IRGC), remain alive.

The country had witnessed massive protests since September 2022, which erupted following the death of Kurdish young woman Mahsa Amini while in custody. She had been detained on the grounds of violating the strict dress code imposed on women.

Those protests represented the largest opposition movement in Iran in recent years, until the outbreak of other protests in late December last year due to rising cost of living, which quickly turned into a broad anti-government movement, peaking on January 8 and 9.

In a statement, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard wrote, “The extensive evidence collected and analyzed in our report leaves no room for doubt: the Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity to suppress the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising of 2022.”

The organization calls for the immediate establishment of an “international criminal justice mechanism by the United Nations General Assembly for accountability” against Tehran.

Amnesty adds that this crackdown also took forms including arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, torture, and rape, as well as “persecution practices against the bereaved relatives of victims.”

The organization notes that it documented the killing of 377 people, including protesters, passersby, and 56 children, by security forces during the 2022 events, although the total number of deaths is likely to be much higher.

Among these victims was Minoo Majidi (62), who was shot dead in Kermanshah province in western Iran.

Her daughter, Mahsa Peyravi, living abroad, told the French Press Agency (AFP), “She went to the street to demand change and to chant for freedom.”

She noted that “the world believes these protests were about women’s freedom. That was indeed the case, but they were also about the freedom of the people and the right to life.”

According to Amnesty International, “the massacres committed during the January 2026 protests bear the same hallmarks of the crimes against humanity documented in this report, but on a more bloody and horrific scale,” as “tens of thousands of protesters were killed within just 48 hours” due to the “illegal, systematic, and widespread use of lethal force” and the “coordinated deployment of security forces under a unified chain of command.”

She added, “If I am demanding justice, it is partly for my mother, but also to help many others whose lives are still in danger,” referring to dozens of people arrested in January who, according to human rights organizations, now face the death penalty. She continued, “We must speak their names.”