More than 15,000 people have been arrested for taking part in anti-government protests in the past eight weeks, sparked by the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. The protest movement has since spread across the country, with demands for greater freedoms and the overthrow of Iran’s government — sparking a bloody crackdown that has killed at least 328 people, including 50 children. In a since-deleted tweet, Trudeau on Monday denounced “the Iranian regime’s barbaric decision to execute nearly 15,000 protesters.” Several celebrities, including actresses Viola Davis and Sophie Turner, shared similar messages to their millions of social media followers on Monday.
Protesters continue to face serious consequences
The number Trudeau cited has been discredited as false information. According to official news sources in Iran and outside observers, more than 2,000 people have been charged for their alleged involvement in the protests, including at least 20 who faced charges that could carry the death penalty. Authorities announced the first death sentence for a protester on Sunday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a rally in Ottawa in support of Iranian protesters on October 29. On Monday, he tweeted — then deleted — a false claim that Iran has sentenced 15,000 protesters to death. In fact, more than 15,000 protesters have been arrested, with one protester sentenced to death on Sunday. (Dave Chan/AFP/Getty Images) Experts say that while the misinformation shared by Trudeau and others is unfortunate, it should not overshadow the serious consequences protesters could face, including possible death sentences or the Iranian government’s heavy-handed efforts to quell dissent. “I don’t think we need to try to speculate or anticipate what the Iranian government is capable of doing because Iranian security and judiciary officials have committed extremely serious human rights violations over the past four decades,” he said. Tara Sepehri Far, a researcher investigating human rights abuses in Iran for Human Rights Watch.
Iran responds to Trudeau’s tweet
She and other human rights experts in Iran worried that false information, shared by a Western leader, would play into the Iranian regime’s narrative that the protests were a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country. “We know the Iranian government would love to find a case of misrepresentation and use it to discredit all information about the violence they are committing,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, told CBC News. from New York. WATCHES | Fake information can help the Iranian regime, says the expert:
Disinformation can play into Iran’s hands: expert
Tara Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch says inaccurate information about the fate of protesters in Iran could help the regime’s claims that foreign governments are behind the unrest. “We should be worried [for the protesters]but it is not necessary to say that 14,000 people are at risk of execution, because the data are not in place — and yet even one execution is too many.” Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. However, several state media outlets took aim at Trudeau on Twitter, with one depicting him in clown makeup and calling the prime minister a “fake news maker,” while another called Trudeau’s deletion — which came about 11 hours after posting the tweet — “obvious retreat.” Trudeau’s office said the tweet was based on “initial reports that were incomplete and lacked necessary context,” pointing to news stories from Newsweek and Yahoo News. (Newsweek has since corrected its story.) Similar tweets from a number of international political commentators and other users remained on Twitter on Tuesday night. The posts had not been flagged as misinformation by the social networking site.
Iranians ‘seem fearless’
Experts told CBC News they expected Iranian judges to order the executions of more protesters in the coming weeks and months. The country’s justice chief last week said he had instructed judges to “avoid showing undue sympathy” to protesters who he considered “the main elements of these riots,” the semi-official Iran Student News Agency reported. “I’m sure a good number of them [protesters] they’re already being tortured and some of them, I’m sorry to say, will probably be executed,” Kaveh Shahrooz, a human rights activist, lawyer and senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute, told CBC’s Power and Politics. WATCHES | Iranians Defy Government Repression, Threat of Death Penalty:
Iranians face torture, possible death sentences
Protesters continue to defy Iran’s regime, taking to the country’s streets on Tuesday to mark three years since another deadly crackdown on riots. Kaveh Shahrooz, a human rights activist, lawyer and senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute says the government’s efforts to “intimidate” protesters are failing. “This is a regime that knows nothing but bloodshed, that knows nothing but brutality and will try to show its strength or try to show its strength by trying to be violent towards the protesters as a way to scare them.” . But Sarrouz also pointed out that state repression and the threat of harsh sanctions had failed to quell the protests. On Tuesday, Iran saw fresh protests and worker strikes marking three years since the unrest that became known as “Bloody November”. That’s when violent protests over fuel prices led the government to shut down the internet and its forces to kill hundreds of people, although some sources put the death toll at over 1,500. “[The government] he will try to create fear by detaining people, torturing them, executing some, unfortunately. But… I don’t think this will work. The Iranian people seem to have no fear at this point,” Shahrooz said. People walk through the closed shops of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on Tuesday. Many shops closed amid protests and strikes marking three years since the 2019 “Bloody November” crackdown on riots sparked by rising fuel prices. (Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press) Later this month, the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on the human rights situation in Iran at the request of dozens of countries, including Canada. Human rights groups had hoped the UN would investigate the treatment of protesters and hold the Iranian government accountable for its actions. Without such an investigation, Ghaemi said, it remains a challenge to gather reliable information about the situation inside Iran — as Trudeau appears to have discovered. But he said that everyone can make mistakes. “Therefore, I give the benefit of the doubt to any of us out there trying to draw attention to Iran.”
