Australia Condemns Iran Regime’s Crackdown

Exile Iranians of the National Council of Resistance of Iran gather in front of the embassy of Iran in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 20, 2022, after the death of an Iranian woman held by the country's morality police. (Michael Sohn/AP Photo)

Australia has condemned the “deadly and disproportionate use of force” by authorities in Iran against protesters who have flooded the streets across the country following the death in custody of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini who was arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly.

Women are required to wear a hijab from the age of nine in Iran after the Islamist regime implemented the law in 1983, reports RFERL. However, the rule is a contentious one, which has seen consistent pushback over the 43-year rule of the Islamic regime.

“We are alarmed by reports that dozens of people have been killed and many more injured, including teenagers, during heavy-handed measures Iranian authorities have implemented to crack down on ongoing protests,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said in a media statement on Sept. 27.

“Australia supports the right of the Iranian people to protest peacefully and calls on the Iranian authorities to exercise restraint in response to ongoing demonstrations.”

The ministers noted that Australia would support calls for a prompt, impartial investigation into Amini’s death by an independent body. The call for the investigation, which is being led by the Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is said to provide a pathway for her family to access the truth about how she died and hold those responsible to account.

Amini died on Sept. 16 in police custody in Tehran, with the United Nations in a media release saying Amini collapsed after being kept in custody for three days.

“Some reports suggested that Amini’s death was a result of alleged torture and ill-treatment,” the U.N. said in a press release on Sept. 22.

However, Iranian authorities have stated that Amini died of a heart attack.

Soon after news of Amini’s death broke, a photograph emerged on social media of her lying in a Tehran hospital in a coma, angering Iranians throughout the country who have since taken to the streets for the past 11 days to demand that the Iranian security forces be held accountable for her death.

Currently, the human rights advocacy group Iran Human Rights alleges that security forces in Iran have killed 76 protestors and that live ammunition is being used against protestors. Additionally, the group claims that families of those killed in the protests are being forced to bury their loved ones at night and have been threatened with legal charges if they make the deaths public.

Iranian authorities have placed the death toll at 41 and said that the figure included security personnel, reported the BBC on Sept. 28.

Canada and US Move to Sanction Iranian Security Forces

The statement by the Australian government follows the United States and Canada’s announcement that they would be placing sanctions on those involved in the death of Amini, including Iran’s morality police.

“We’ve seen Iran disregarding human rights time and time again. Now we see it with the death of Mahsa Amini and the crackdown on protests,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

“Today, I’m announcing that we will implement sanctions on dozens of individuals and entities, including Iran’s so-called morality police.”

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• Canada to Impose Sanctions on Iran’s ‘Morality Police’ Amid Protest Clampdown

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it would sanction the leaders of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Army’s Ground Forces, the Basij Resistance Forces, and other law enforcement agencies and deny them access to their properties and bank accounts held in the United States.

“These officials oversee organizations that routinely employ violence to suppress peaceful protesters and members of Iranian civil society, political dissidents, women’s rights activists, and members of the Iranian Baha’i community,” Treasury said.