Iran Protest Crackdown and Human Rights

Eyewitness accounts gathered by Iranian and exile human‑rights groups allege that security forces sexually assaulted teenage detainees, including a 16‑year‑old, and forced other prisoners to strip to check for pellet wounds during the latest nationwide protests that began Dec. 28, 2025. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network reports that in western cities like Kermanshah some families have been told to pay up to 10 billion rials — a sum equivalent to many years of wages — just to retrieve the bodies of relatives killed in the crackdown, and that funerals were held under heavy security with relatives pressured to blame protesters for the deaths. HRANA now counts at least 4,902 confirmed fatalities, 9,387 additional deaths under review and 26,541 arrests, even as Iran’s prosecutor general Mohammad Movahedi declares 'the sedition is over' and credits loyalists with extinguishing the unrest. The exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran tells Fox that detainees are still being killed and their bodies burned, and says clashes between protesters and Revolutionary Guard units continue in cities such as Kermanshah, Rasht and Mashhad despite official claims of calm. These allegations, if borne out, would add sexual violence, extortion of bereaved families and corpse desecration to an already extensive list of abuses that U.S. and European governments are weighing as they debate new sanctions and other responses to Tehran’s crackdown.