(FiveNation.com)- In the ongoing protests in Iran, security forces are allegedly dealing with women protesters differently from how they deal with men. According to healthcare workers who are secretly treating the wounded protesters, security forces are deliberately firing shotgun blasts into the faces, breasts, and genitals of the women.
In a report last week, the Guardian interviewed doctors and nurses who have been treating protesters injured in the anti-regime demonstrations. Those interviewed said they first noticed that injuries on the women they treated were very different from the injuries sustained by men, who were usually shot in the legs, backs, or buttocks.
The healthcare workers provided photos to the Guardian showing some of the wounds sustained from birdshot pellets often fired at close range.
The ten healthcare workers who spoke to the Guardian said many of those injured will be left permanently damaged, as shots to the eyes are “particularly common” among men, women, and children.
One physician in the central Isfahan province who is secretly treating the wounded to avoid arrest told the Guardian that he believes security forces are targeting women differently from men “because they wanted to destroy the beauty of these women.”
He said that one of his patients told him that she had been circled by a group of ten security officers who deliberately shot her in the genitals and thighs.
While most of the pellets were easy to remove, two of them were “wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening.” The doctor said this type of injury presented a “serious risk of vaginal infection.”
In late November, the UN Rights Council voted to appoint a probe into the regime’s deadly crackdown on the ongoing protests that first erupted in September after the in-custody death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten by morality police for refusing to wear a hijab.
