Atrocities are on the rise in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where increasing numbers of medical personnel are being pressured, persecuted, kidnapped and convicted for rescuing injured people, including protesters. A doctors’ strike has been called to protest the death of Aida Rostami, a young female doctor whose mutilated body was found a few days ago.
For the past month, at least two female doctors have disappeared after treating the wounded outside a hospital, and their corpses have been found in sordid circumstances. Iran has been the scene of popular uprisings since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after being arrested and brutalized by morality police because a lock of hair was sticking out of her veil. .
The World Medical Association (WMA) has decried these new violations and the non-respect of international conventions on medical ethics. She calls for a moratorium on the death sentences handed down in Iran against dozens of people, including doctors.
“We are deeply shocked that increasing numbers of medical professionals are being threatened, arrested and tortured for doing their job. As physicians, we have an ethical obligation to care for all sick and injured people, regardless of any other consideration,” denounced the Homework Dr Osahon Enabulele, the president of the AMM.
Killed for doing their duty
The DD Aida Rostami, 36, last spoke to her family at 7 p.m. on December 12 as she gathered medical supplies to provide treatment to injured protesters at the Ekbatan residential compound. Located west of Tehran, this place has been the scene for several months of intense nocturnal demonstrations.
However, Aida Rostami never came back. According to IranWire, an independent media run by Iranian and diaspora journalists, the police contacted his family the next day to announce his death, attributable “to a car accident”. The agency of the Iranian justice system, Mizan Online, rather reported, a few days later, a “suicide”, or a fall from a bridge, which occurred following an argument with a man.
Regime agents also steal bodies from morgue to erase evidence of gunshot death
These contradictory versions fuel the thesis of a “fabricated suicide scenario”, according to Iran International, a London-based media.
By recovering the body of the DD Rostami’s family told IranWire that he bore signs of torture, bruises, including on his genitals, and a broken arm. One of the young woman’s eyelids had been sewn on, to conceal the disappearance of an eyeball.
Another carer, a 23-year-old medical student, Aylar Haqqi, also disappeared in November in Tabriz. His body was found in a construction site. Authorities also attributed her death to suicide, but her family believes she was thrown from the top of buildings to cover up a shooting death, according to the same media.
“Doctors are now targeted by the regime because they have to treat the wounded at home or on the street. And this, because the wounded are afraid to go to the hospital for fear of being identified and then arrested,” says Nimâ Machouf, a Quebec epidemiologist of Iranian origin, who has remained in contact with many Iranian doctors.
The pressure continues to increase on caregivers, who are struggling to continue to do their job, and the medical system is held hostage, she says.
“Regime agents dig into medical records to find those wounded by gunshots, considered to be opponents. They sometimes require doctors to change the actual cause of death on certificates. The health system is used for purposes of repression. They also steal the bodies from the morgue to erase the evidence of death by bullet,” says Nimâ Machouf.
Several families refuse for this reason that the bodies of their relatives who died as a result of brutality are transported to the morgue, for fear of not being able to grieve and bury them with dignity, she said.
“Doctors are caught between a rock and a hard place. The government is trying to put pressure on them. Ambulances are even used to move troops or arrest people, rather than to transport the wounded. The regime no longer knows where to turn to silence those who rebel,” she denounces.
Sentenced to death
The lives of two fifty-year-old doctors, Dr.r Hamid Ghareh Hassanlou and his wife, is also threatened, since the name of Dr Hassanlou was placed on the list of 28 people sentenced to death for rebellion since mid-September by the regime.
Originally from Turkey, the couple of doctors were declared guilty on December 5 of “corruption on Earth”, after having attended the funeral, in Karaj, of a young woman shot dead during a demonstration. They were arrested shortly after in their vehicle, near a road where a Bassidji, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, was killed.
According to Amnesty International, the couple were tortured until a confession, extracted under the blow of force, was extracted from the wife of Dr.r Hassanlou. Beaten up, the latter suffered internal bleeding and was hospitalized. Photos of these bruises, taken from his hospital bed, are circulating on social networks. With six fractured ribs, he was released from intensive care to undergo the first part of his trial, where he was denied the right to a lawyer of his choice. Although his wife recanted, he was sentenced to death in a collective trial involving 15 people, and his wife was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“These doctors are in danger and still do not have access to the medical care their condition requires, nor even the strict right to be defended by a lawyer. All those sentenced to capital punishment are in the same situation”, denounces the president of the World Medical Association.
These reports of torture and sham trials are part of the wave of atrocities denounced by numerous human rights associations since September. The humanitarian organization Human Rights Watch estimates that 469 protesters have been killed since Mahsa Amini’s death, the majority of whom were under 25, and 63 were children or adolescents. According to AFP, no less than 18,000 people have been arrested in Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini.
Two young people sentenced to death have already been executed: Mohsen Shekari, on December 8, and Majidreza Rahnavard, 23, hanged on top of a crane on December 12, both for “waging war against God”. On Tuesday, the name of another 19-year-old, Ali Makan Davari, was added to the list of those sentenced to death.