The Cost of Normalization: Remembering Jina Mahsa Amini and Confronting State Terror in Iran
On September 16, 2022, 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini was murdered in the custody of Iran’s so called “morality police” after being violently detained over state mandated dress codes. What began as an outcry against the execution of an innocent young woman ignited the “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Jin, Jiyan, Azadî) uprising the most sustained, widespread, and profound challenge to the terrorist Islamic Republic in its history.
Years later, the tragedy is not only the blood that has been spilled on Iranian streets, but the persistent failure of the international community to treat the Islamic Republic as what its actions prove it to be: a violent enterprise operating through state terrorism, mass repression, and systematic brutality.
The Hard Evidence: Crimes Against Humanity by the Numbers
Independent human rights documentation has established that the violence deployed against the Iranian people was not accidental or isolated it was deliberate, centrally orchestrated policy by a terrorist organization.
- Over 5551 Documented Civilian Killings: According to the Independent International Fact Finding Mission on Iran, security forces unlawfully killed at least 5551 protesters across 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces. Among those killed were at least 449 women and 268 children. Which did not end there and has continued up to the state raising the number to over 50,000 innocent lives. And these are just documented numbers the data is much higher in the social media reports.
- Over 20,000 Detentions: Human rights monitors, and Human Rights Activists News Agencies verified that upwards of 22,000 citizens including students, journalists, lawyers, and civil rights defenders were swept into detention centers under brutal conditions. Which hundreds of these detainees were executed.
- Weaponized Mutilation: Independent investigators documented systematic patterns where security forces deliberately targeted protesters at close range with shotguns and metal pellets, intentionally blinding thousands of peaceful demonstrators in one or both eyes leaving them permanently blind.
- Systematic Torture and Sexual Violence: The UN Fact-Finding Mission formally concluded that state authorities committed crimes against humanity, documenting state sanctioned rape, gang rape, electric shocks, and severe beatings against detainees including minors to coerce false confessions.
- Summary Judicial Executions: In the wake of the uprising, Iranian authorities executed protesters following sham trials in Revolutionary Courts lasting mere minutes, without access to counsel or due process, charging them with vague capital offenses like “enmity against God” (Moharebeh). Thousands more continue to face execution each year as the state escalates the death penalty to terrorize the public into submission. The executions killing train never stops. It happens daily at dawn.
” These are only the documented numbers; the actual figures are believed to be much higher, according to reports circulating on social media.”
The Apparatus of Terror: The IRGC
The instrument of this violence both internally and internationally is the Enlisted Terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The IRGC does not function as a conventional military. It operates as a paramilitary and intelligence apparatus dedicated to regime survival, regional destabilization, hostage diplomacy, and the violent elimination of dissent. Democracies including the United States and Canada have officially designated the IRGC as a terrorist entity, citing its long history of transnational assassinations, proxy warfare, and mass atrocities against civilians.
Yet, on the world stage, diplomatic bodies continue to grant legitimacy, diplomatic platforms, and formal recognition to the very apparatus directing this machinery of death. Granting political legitimacy to a regime that shoots unarmed teenage girls in the streets does not preserve regional stability; it subsidizes impunity.
An Urgent Call for Global Action
Remembering Jina Mahsa Amini requires far more than passive solidarity or symbolic statements. It demands tangible, coordinated accountability from international institutions and democratic governments worldwide:
- Designate the Entire IRGC as a Terrorist Organization: Every democratic jurisdiction that has delayed this designation including the European Union and the United Kingdom must formally list the IRGC in its entirety.
- End Diplomatic Impunity: Expel the regime’s diplomats and revoke visas for state officials and their families who enjoy freedoms abroad while funding or directing atrocities at home.
- Invoke Universal Jurisdiction: National judicial authorities must investigate and issue international arrest warrants for Iranian officials responsible for crimes against humanity under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
- Enforce Targeted Sanctions Against Human Rights Abusers: Freeze the assets of all commanders, judges, and prison officials identified by UN bodies as perpetrators of torture, extrajudicial killings, and forced confessions.
- Directly Support the People of Iran: Provide secure, uncensored communication infrastructure and ensure independent human rights monitors and civil resistance networks are sustained.
Jina Mahsa Amini did not die so the world could issue hollow statements of concern. Her name became a code word for freedom because the Iranian people refuse to surrender their dignity.
It is time for the international community to stop normalizing state violence and stand unconditionally with the people demanding Woman, Life, Freedom.