Basij Militia Continues Brutal Suppression of Iranian Demonstrators

Videos filtering out through Twitter over the past 24 hours show that Iran’s Basij Militia brutally attacked unarmed students at the Tehran Polytechnic University who were protesting the Islamic Regime’s downing of Flight 752.

The Basij Militia is an official domestic paramilitary organisation in Iran that has been involved in suppressing demonstrators against the Iranian regime, often seen arriving at the scene of demonstrations on their trademark motorcycles.

While the number of active basiji or members of the Basij is frequently boasted about by Iranian authorities, there are probably around 100,000 active volunteer militiamen, although hundreds of thousands of additional basiji could be mobilised if called up by the authorities. The basiji complement around 40,000-60,000 regular law enforcement officers.

According to the US Congressional Research Service, the Basij are integrated into all aspects of public life in Iran:

The IRGC is the key organization for maintaining internal security. The Basij militia, which reports to the IRGC commander in chief, operates from thousands of positions in Iran’s institutions and, as of 2008, has been integrated at the provincial level with the IRGC’s provincial units.

Basiji are selected by local imams as well as “trusted citizens and legal associations“, while local mosques function as Basij neighbourhood headquarters, a factor that explains why a mosque was among the official buildings being attacked in the last few days of protest.

In 2018, Tony Duheaume wrote about how the Basij are feeding people into Iran’s torture factories.

Those demonstrators that are grabbed from the crowd, face arbitrary arrest, and in most cases, with no proper legal representation, are taken into custody facing trumped up charges. These charges more often than not comprise of vague accusations, such as conspiring against national security, and after speedily being processed, with no legal representation, the protesters find themselves incarcerated inside one of the regime’s numerous torture factories.

Torture leading to death; rape of men, women and children; physical torture; psychological torture; mock executions; threats to families; and, crude amputations are commonplace in the regime’s torture factories. In the circumstances, the courage of ordinary Iranians in protesting the regime is truly inspirational, and the moral bankruptcy of the regime itself, quite transparent.

Equally, it is unconscionable that the mullahs have so many apologists in the West, many bought and paid for, and that so few Western commentators appear to understand and care about the systems of coercion and repression that are keeping Iranians oppressed.

May God have mercy on the Iranian people!

Article Licence: CC BY-ND 4.0.

Picture by MojNews, CC BY 4.0, Link.

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