Iran has paid with thousands of lives for protests: the nation feels betrayed – Rezazade

New evidence of mass repressions in Iran has shocked the international community. Photos and videos have appeared on the Internet, showing traces of torture and ill-treatment on the bodies of deceased protesters. According to human rights sources and the Iranian opposition, the number of people killed and tortured may reach more than 50 thousand people.

This is the result of the waves of protests that have swept through the country in recent years - from student protests to mass uprisings against the Islamic regime, caused by the economic crisis, repression, murders of women, censorship and brutal violence by security forces.

International expert and first vice president of the Iranian opposition in Washington, Ali Reza Rezazade, states that the scale of the crimes of the Iranian authorities has long exceeded the scope of the internal political crisis.

“What is happening in Iran is not just the suppression of protests. This is systemic state terror. People are being tortured in prisons, entire families are disappearing, bodies are being returned with traces of electric shock, fractures, and torn out nails. These are crimes against humanity,” Rezazade emphasizes.

According to him, what is particularly painful for Iranian society is the feeling of betrayal by the international community. Despite numerous evidence, sanctions and resolutions are not accompanied by real mechanisms to hold the regime accountable.

“Iranians feel abandoned. The world sees photos of tortured people, hears the numbers, and nothing changes. The regime feels impunity, and therefore the scale of violence is only growing,” the expert notes.

Rezazade emphasizes that today it is no longer about reforming the regime, but about its complete delegitimization at the international level.

“The Iranian state has de facto turned into a machine for producing death. While the regime’s leaders are quietly traveling the world and negotiating, thousands are dying in prisons. This is a moral collapse of the global human rights system,” he says.

According to the expert, the only real way out is to create an international tribunal for the crimes of the Iranian regime and officially recognize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

“Without this, Iran will continue to remain a country of mass graves, fear and silence. But society has already woken up. And these 50 thousand dead are not the end, they are the verdict of the regime,” Ali Reza Rezazade concludes.