Iran Human Rights calls on the international community, particularly the World Health Organisation, to unequivocally condemn these actions and to conduct an independent investigation into these reports.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, IHRNGO Director, said: “The testimonies of doctors show that the Islamic Republic has trampled even the most basic human and medical principles and has systematically used hospitals as instruments of repression and killing. The deliberate shutdown of ventilators, the prevention of treatment for the injured, and the arrest of patients from hospital beds constitute crimes against humanity and demonstrate the complete collapse of any ethical or legal standards in this government.”
He added: “When states use hospitals as tools of repression, this is not merely a human rights crisis but a global public-health crisis. We call on the World Health Organisation to examine reports concerning the conversion of hospitals into instruments of repression, the denial of medical care to patients, and the obstruction of medical staff from carrying out their professional duties. Such investigation is essential to protect lives now and to ensure accountability and justice in the future.”
Extrajudicial Killing Through Denial of Medical Care: “Let Them Die”
A doctor working in Lorestan province described to IHRNGO the treatment of injured protesters by security forces and the role played by pro-government doctors in these practices: “I witnessed things I had never seen in my life. I saw a doctor known as Dr H. M., who unofficially oversees all surgical wards in Lorestan province. He is the son of a ‘martyr’ [typically used to refer to those killed during the Iran-Iraq war], a member of the IRGC, and a sub-specialist in plastic surgery. He sent wounded members of the security forces to the operating theatre, but if the injured were ordinary people, he would say: ‘Let them die here.’”
The doctor confirmed earlier reports about ventilators being disconnected from injured protesters in some hospitals, adding: “For example, injured people who had tubes inserted into their airways and were connected to oxygen machines had the tubes pulled out of their mouths and were placed in the morgue while still alive. It was Dr H. M. who prevented people who had been shot from receiving treatment; he would say: ‘Let them die.’ He was the one who instructed nurses to disconnect the machines from the injured, and if a nurse refused, he would immediately report them so they would be arrested. I saw that only a very small and select group of doctors were allowed to treat the injured.”
On reports of wounded protesters being finished off with a coup de grâce inside hospitals, he said: “I did not witness this myself, but the medical teams I work with told me that injured people were shot at close range.”
Another doctor from Fars province also told IHRNGO: “Many of those brought to the hospital where I work had been shot in the head, but because telephone lines were cut, the medical staff could not even contact the on-call surgeons.”
Use of the Healthcare System as an Instrument of Repression
Another eyewitness told IHRNGO that security agents, on 26 January 2026, visited several hospitals in Tehran with judicial warrants and obtained complete lists of admitted patients. According to the witness, they also collected “information about those who had paid patients’ discharge fees, including bank card numbers and personal details of the payers; even in cases where a patient had been admitted under an incorrect name, identification was possible through banking information.”
The deliberate shutdown of ventilators, the prevention of treatment for the injured, and the arrest of patients from hospital beds constitute crimes against humanity and demonstrate the complete collapse of any ethical or legal standards in this government.
Members of medical staff who spoke with IHRNGO warned that the imposition of a security atmosphere can directly restrict emergency response and effective medical treatment. As a result, many injured protesters have abandoned treatment midway out of fear of arrest and turned instead to clandestine and informal care. One member of the medical staff described the situation as “conditions resembling an actual war zone.”
A third eyewitness from Tehran told IHRNGO that “security and intelligence forces carried out targeted, room-by-room searches in several hospitals to identify and arrest injured protesters.” According to the witness, these searches even extended into operating theatres.
He added: “At Fayaz Hospital in Tehran, they refused to admit a wounded person. They told them, ‘We won’t accept this case; it’s political,’ and the injured person died on the way back home. If the hospital had not been under security pressure, they would have treated the wounded person and he wouldn’t have died.”
Enforced Disappearance, Falsification, Concealment, and Destruction of Evidence
The first eyewitness from Lorestan told IHRNGO that death certificates were issued for people killed during the protests in the city without their bodies being transferred to the Forensic Medicine Organisation. He said: “I saw bodies being brought in ice-cream freezer trucks, unloaded in the hospital courtyard, and doctors were told to issue death certificates for all of them without sending them to forensic medicine. They were then buried collectively. Some families here are still searching for their children and have not found them. The families of those killed are told either to declare that their child was a member of the Basij (IRGC), or to pay between 750 million tomans (aprox. €4,050) and one billion tomans (approx. €5,400) for the bullets.
Another specialist doctor working in several hospitals in Tehran told IHRNGO that protesters injured by gunfire, if admitted to hospital, are treated “under fabricated causes, such as traffic accidents or tumours.” He added: “A 22-year-old woman who underwent surgery yesterday with a diagnosis of a jaw tumour had in fact been shot in the throat.”
In addition, multiple reports published on social media from large and small cities across Iran indicate that security forces have transferred some injured patients from hospitals to undisclosed locations after treatment, and their fate remains unknown.
Punishment and Intimidation of Medical Staff
A report received by IHRNGO from a member of medical staff in Isfahan indicates that security forces raided the Milad, Sa’di, Sepahan, Sina, and Gharazi hospitals, as well as the homes of several doctors who had assisted the injured. According to the report, they confiscated more than 500 files related to wounded patients and have been seeking to arrest those injured. It further states that a number of doctors have been threatened, summoned, and even detained, and there is no information available about their current whereabouts or condition.
Based on information received by IHRNGO, security forces have also raided homes and clinics, violently arresting doctors and volunteer first responders and damaging their property. Iran Human Rights confirms the arrest of at least 35 doctors, nurses, and other medical staff for providing treatment to protesters. Those arrested include Babak (Hossein) Zarabian, an infectious disease specialist in Isfahan; Babak Pouramin in Mashhad; Golnar Naraqhi, an emergency medicine specialist in Tehran; Alireza Hosseini, an anaesthesiology specialist in Golpayegan; Alireza Rezaei, a urology specialist in Kermanshah; Masoud Ebadifard Azar; and Parisa Porkar in Qazvin
Evidence of the Scale of the Killings
A doctor from Rasht reported that since the peak days of the protests that month, more than 13 surgical operations were being carried out daily at the hospital where he works; despite this, many patients wounded by gunfire died. According to him, in just one hospital, around 1,200 deaths were recorded on the first day (8 January), while in nearby hospitals, including in Lahijan, 27 protest-related deaths were also reported.
Source: Iran Human Righst, Staff, February 3, 2026
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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