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Iranwire – Iranian security forces have “abducted” approximately 400 Kurdish teenagers, including many under-18s, a human rights organization says, amid a brutal crackdown on more than four months of nationwide protests.
Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, said on February 9 that it could identify only 186 of the victims so far. The youngest is aged 14.
The abductions took place in the western provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan and Ilam. One abduction was reported in Tehran.
“Out of a total of 186 children, 154 boys and 32 girls had their IDs verified,” Hengaw said, adding, “The city of Javanrud has had the most child abductions by security forces, with a total of 28 incidents. 14 cases in Saqqez and 21 cases in Sanandaj were also recorded.”
Some of the detained youngsters were released after several days or weeks of detention during which they were kept in “isolation,” according to Hengaw, and most of them were “subjected to severe interrogation with no regard for the children’s protection rights.”
Iran has been swept by protests since the September death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehran’s morality police.
Many schoolchildren and university students have joined the protest movement, which has grown to become the biggest threat to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power.
The authorities have cracked down hard on the demonstrators, killing more than 520 people and unlawfully detained over 19,000, activists say.
The demonstrations and clampdown on dissent have been particularly intense in the country’s western Kurdish areas and Sistan and Baluchistan province, home to Iran’s beleaguered Sunni Baluch community.
