The suppression has resulted in thousands of deaths and a near-total shutdown of internet and telecommunications services, thereby becoming the most significant unrest in years.

The demonstrations, initially triggered in December by the devaluation of the Iranian rial and soaring costs for essential items like food and fuel, have expanded into sustained protests across cities and towns in all 31 provinces against political repression, corruption and systemic failures of governance. 

Despite the largely civilian and decentralised nature of the protests, Iranian authorities have responded with militarised force, deploying the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Basij paramilitaries and law enforcement agencies using firearms, shotguns and tear gas.  

IBA president, Claudio Visco, said: “The reported use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators is not a matter of internal security discretion – it is a clear violation of Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], to which Iran is legally bound. 

“International law permits the use of lethal force only as a last resort when a person or others are facing an imminent threat of death or grave harm but always in strict adherence to principles of necessity, proportionality and precaution. The facts emerging from Iran point in the opposite direction.”