Iran intensifies political repression and restricts rights under the pretext of war

Amnesty International denounced thousands of detentions, politically motivated executions and a massive internet shutdown that affected millions of people.

The human rights organization denounced that the Iranian authorities are using the pretext of “war conditions” to intensify their crackdown on dissent through arbitrary detentions, the fast-tracking of unfair judicial proceedings, politically motivated executions, harsh prison sentences and property confiscations.

Since the unlawful military attack launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026, the government of Iran has arbitrarily detained more than 6,000 people, including protesters, journalists, professionals, human rights defenders, opponents and members of ethnic and religious minorities.

Amnesty warned that senior judicial officials have ordered expedited proceedings against those detained, including on charges carrying the death penalty, amid widespread concern over enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, as well as the use of forced “confessions” in grossly unfair sham trials.

The organization’s complaint also notes that the Iranian authorities subjected more than 90 million people to systematic isolation, violating their right to freedom of information, with the longest internet shutdown on record, lasting 88 days. At the same time, they criminalized browsing the web as “espionage,” punishable by death. Internet access was restored with restrictions at the end of May.

Along these lines, Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director of Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, stressed that “the Iranian authorities are exploiting the crisis to further erode the human rights of the population in Iran,” and added that Iranian society is already suffering the consequences of the unlawful airstrikes by U.S. and Israeli forces, on top of years of repression by its government.

Guevara Rosas also explained that, in order to maintain its grip on power, the Iranian government has unleashed an all-out assault on the country’s population, targeting anyone who dares to criticize the Islamic Republic or to share on social media information about the U.S. or Israeli attacks or about human rights violations.

Amnesty International also urges the Iranian authorities to lift all restrictions on internet use and calls on them to stop imposing shutdowns on the population. At the same time, it states that they must release all those arbitrarily detained and protect all persons deprived of their liberty from torture and other ill-treatment. In addition, it calls on them to “reveal the fate and whereabouts of those who are victims of enforced disappearance, and immediately halt all executions with a view to establishing an official moratorium on the death penalty.”

Amnesty also denounces the government for threatening further killings of those who express opposition or dissent against the government or advocate the fall of the Islamic Republic system, and for branding its critics as “traitors” and “collaborators of the enemy.”

The internet shutdown imposed by the authorities since February 28, 2026 made it very difficult to document human rights violations in detail. For this press release, Amnesty International spoke with 10 sources with information outside Iran: relatives of victims, human rights defenders and journalists who knew of violations. The organization also reviewed videos that circulated online, studied official text messages sent by the authorities, analyzed official statements and what state media were saying, and investigated information from independent media and human rights organizations working from outside Iran.

The authorities created a discriminatory tiered internet access system in which only a few pre-approved people, such as those working in state institutions or in certain authorized professional sectors, could access a less restricted global internet through “Internet Pro” services. Meanwhile, they denied the general population access to the internet and the ability to connect with one another and with the outside world. And since access through Internet Pro depended on SIM cards registered in each user’s name and on identity verification systems, many people feared it was not safe from state surveillance.

In this regard, Erika Guevara Rosas called on the international community to monitor the situation in Iran, since the authorities cannot use a conflict as a smokescreen to strengthen their repressive apparatus. At the same time, she stated that “the human rights situation in Iran and the impunity crisis demand urgent and sustained international diplomatic action to prevent the authorities from continuing to commit atrocity crimes, and also to open paths toward international justice, including by having the UN Security Council refer the situation in Iran to the International Criminal Court”