As anti-hijab protests by women in Iran continues, security forces, who have brutally repressed demonstrators with batons and handcuffs, are reportedly targeting unarmed women with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts, and genitals, according to a report.
According to medics who treated the bullet wounds, the “birdshot pellets” that security forces fired on protesters from close range were aimed at women’s faces, breasts, and genitals.
Images obtained by the US media outlet revealed people with dozens of tiny “shot” balls lodged deep within their flesh. Men, on the other hand, were shot in the legs, buttocks, and backs.
“I treated a woman in her early 20s who was shot in her genitals by two pellets. Ten other pellets were lodged in her inner thigh. These 10 pellets were easily removed, but those two pellets were a challenge, because they were wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening,” A doctor was quoted as saying that men and women were targeted differently.
According to the report, some of the other medics accused security forces, including the feared pro-regime Basij militia, of disregarding riot control practices such as firing weapons at feet and legs to avoid damaging vital organs.
Protests have swept Iran since September 16 in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested by morality police for allegedly violating Sharia-based hijab law.
Protesters have burned their head coverings, yelled anti-government slogans, and thrown turbans off the heads of Muslim clerics. Since Mahsa Amini’s death, an increasing number of women, particularly in Tehran’s fashionable north, have refused to wear hijab.
Meanwhile, Iranian authorities have accused the US, Israel, European powers, and Saudi Arabia of fomenting the unrest, claiming that they used Amini’s death as an “excuse” to attack the country and its foundations.
The hijab has been a central ideological issue for Iranian authorities since shortly after the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution, and they have repeatedly stated that they will not back down from it.