Security pressure on citizens in a number of Kurdistan’s cities has risen noticeably over recent days and weeks, according to reports received by the Hana Human Rights Organization. The information gathered points to a surge in summonses, threats and intimidation of citizens, the setting up of checkpoints, searches of mobile phones, and pressure brought to bear on civil activists, young people, athletes, teachers, and other segments of society. A significant share of these actions has been attributed to the Islamic Republic’s security and intelligence forces, particularly institutions affiliated with IRGC Intelligence.
In numerous cases, Hana has learned, security agents have pressured citizens through repeated phone calls, mostly from unknown numbers, coercing them through threats and intimidation into reporting to security and intelligence agencies. At the same time, reports have come in of checkpoints set up at the entrances and squares of certain Kurdish cities, where citizens, particularly young people, are stopped and have their phones searched. In a number of instances, phones have been confiscated outright without any clear legal basis being given. Searching the contents of a person’s phone and accessing their personal information without legal authorization and the necessary judicial safeguards amounts to a violation of privacy and of citizens’ fundamental rights.
Reports received also indicate that a number of citizens, once they reported to security agencies following these summonses, were met with degrading and violent treatment. Threats, insults, vulgar language, personal humiliation, and conduct that violates human dignity are among the practices described. Hana has likewise received reports of beatings and the use of electric shocks against some of those summoned. Depending on their severity and the circumstances in which they occur, acts of this kind can amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and in severe cases to torture, practices whose prohibition under international law is absolute and that no state of emergency, security consideration, or wartime condition can justify.
The Hana Human Rights Organization emphasizes that war, armed conflict, or any other exceptional situation does not relieve states of their fundamental human rights obligations. International human rights law remains in force during wartime as well, applying alongside the rules of international humanitarian law wherever armed conflict exists. Even in emergency conditions, any restriction on individual rights must rest on a legal basis, answer a genuine necessity, be proportionate, and remain subject to effective oversight, and certain rights, including the prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment, may never be suspended under any circumstances.
Seen in this light, invoking wartime conditions or security considerations to expand security control over society, to carry out summonses stripped of legal procedure, to conduct arbitrary searches of personal belongings, or to use violence against citizens has no legal justification. This is all the more troubling given that institutions of the Islamic Republic, well before the present conditions took shape, already had a sustained record of violating citizens’ fundamental rights, particularly in the cities of Kurdistan. Wartime conditions cannot become a cover for intensifying these same longstanding patterns of repression and the impunity security agents have long enjoyed.
The persistence of these practices in Kurdistan’s cities is also a reminder of historical patterns of security repression deployed against Kurdish society over past decades, including in the 1980s. Reproducing such patterns, particularly through the creation of a climate of public fear, sweeping intrusion into private life, and the use of violence to control society, amounts to a serious violation of the principles of the rule of law and of the Islamic Republic’s human rights obligations.
In condemning this intensification of security pressure across Kurdistan’s cities, the Hana Human Rights Organization calls for an immediate end to arbitrary summonses, to the threatening and intimidation of citizens, to unlawful searches of mobile phones, and to any form of torture or violent and degrading treatment. Hana stresses that Islamic Republic authorities are obligated, under all circumstances, including wartime and security conditions, to uphold human dignity, the right to personal security, privacy, the prohibition of torture, and the fundamental guarantees of a fair trial, and that officials and agents implicated in violations of these rights must be investigated and held accountable through an independent, effective, and impartial mechanism.