Female protesters in Iran shot in faces, breasts and genitals, medics say
By Snejana Farberov
December 8, 2022 1:55pm Updated
Medics treating protesters in Iran said they were seeing a difference in the type of injuries inflicted on men and women by the security forces — with the female activists often being shot in their faces, breasts and genitals.
In interviews with the Guardian, multiple doctors and nurses who have been surreptitiously caring for wounded demonstrators during months of unrest said it appeared that officers tasked with stopping the protests have been targeting specific body parts in women.
One doctor from Isfahan province speaking to the outlet on condition of anonymity said he believed the authorities “wanted to destroy the beauty of these women.”
Iran has been roiled by violent protests since Sept. 16, when a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of the morality police after being detained for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”
So far, more than 475 people have been killed in the unrest and over 18,000 have been detained by government forces as part of a brutal crackdown on the popular movement, which was spearheaded by women and girls fed up with the ayatollahs’ draconian rule.
Iranian authorities reportedly have been firing on demonstrators at close — sometimes point-blank — range with birdshot pellets made of metal or plastic. Doctors said shots to the eyes were particularly common.
The doctor from Isfahan told the newspaper about his experience treating a young woman who was struck in her crotch area with a dozen pellets, two of which had lodged inside her genitals.
“Two pellets were a challenge, because they were wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening,” he said, adding that the state of the patient left him anguished because she “could have been my daughter.”
Another doctor from the city of Karaj suggested that the security forces “shoot at the faces and private body parts of women because they have an inferiority complex and they want to get rid of their sexual complexes by hurting these young people.”
There also have been hundreds of reports of protesters being blinded by pellets shot into their eyes.
Ghazal Ranjkesh, a student from the city of Bandar Abbas, wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that she was shot in her right eye on her way home from work.
“The last image that my right eye saw was the smile of the person shooting at me,” she wrote.
The government in Tehran has stepped up its efforts to stamp out the unrest, which has come to pose one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
On Thursday, Iran carried out the first execution stemming from the protests by hanging Mohsen Shekari and was seeking the death penalty against 21 others.
https://nypost.com/2022/12/08/female-protesters-in-iran-shot-in-faces-breasts-and-genitals-medics-say/