NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Iran has formed a committee, under the Interior Ministry, to investigate deaths in connection with growing anti-government protests in the country, the deputy said on Thursday. – Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Bagheri Kani.
On an official visit to New Delhi, Ali Bagheri Kani told the Indian television channel NDTV that around 50 police officers were killed and hundreds more were injured in the protest movement sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini mid-September.
The Iranian deputy minister did not give a report on the number of demonstrators killed but according to human rights organizations, the repression by the security forces left more than 300 dead.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Thursday that Iran was going through a “genuine human rights crisis” with the arrest of nearly 14,000 people to date, including including minors.
“The unnecessary and disproportionate use of force must end,” he said in his first address to the Human Rights Council since taking office last month.
He was speaking before the holding of a special session in Geneva during which a vote could take place on the creation of a fact-finding mission.
During the Council meeting, the Iranian representative defended her country’s human rights record and described the proceedings as “shameful and appalling”.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets that the Council is once again being abused by certain arrogant states to alienate a sovereign member state of the United Nations, which is fully committed to respecting its obligation to promote and protect human rights,” said Khadijeh Karimi, Vice President for Women and Family Affairs of Iran.
The wave of anger that followed the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by vice squad for an outfit deemed inappropriate, quickly spread across the country and particularly in peripheral regions of Iran. where minorities who say they have long been marginalized live.
(Shivam Patel in New Delhi, Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Emma Farge in Geneva, French version Laetitia Volga, edited by Sophie Louet)