An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran’s security forces, a leaked document understood to have been written by those forces says.
It has let us map what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.
Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.
We put the report’s allegations to Iran’s government and its Revolutionary Guards. They did not respond.
Marked “Highly Confidential”, the report summarises a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - the security force that defends the country’s Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.
I want to preface this by stating I am not a “thin blue line” person, nor am I someone who typically defends the police. I have attended protests about police brutality and I’m a proponent for substantial reform and reallocation of funding.
That being said, you’re not completely wrong about the murder thing, but you’re not completely right either. Police did shoot and kill almost 900 people in the US in 2023. That averages to more than 2 per day. To call every police involved shooting a murder is just ignorant. Police do murder, and IMHO they are usually not held accountable when they do, but I would argue that it’s far less than 50% of the killings.
Your rape claim is much less credible. This study identified 669 cases of police sexual violence from 2005 through 2012.. Any number greater than 0 is unacceptable, but this is a far cry from your “daily rape” claims, and your hyperbole does a disservice to victims of sexual assault.
All that being said, and as much scrutiny and criticism as US police deserve, you’re wildly ignorant to suggest the US is worse than Iran when it comes to abuse and misconduct.
Keep in mind, no one actually knows how many people US police kill. If no outside agency, of some sort, is involved, they do not report it. These numbers are based on what were reported and, according to Patrick Lynch - Previous head of the largest police union in the US, “most” police killings never make it to the public. So it is likely that the number is, at least, a little more than twice that. The 1994 crime bill stipulated an obligation for all police killings to be reported, in full, to the federal government. The DOJ has never enforced this rule, and has no plans to ever do so. They think it would be too destructive to police if they had to do this.
https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-more-half-police-killings-usa-are-unreported-and-black
The quote from Patrick Lynch was from an industry rag and I can not find any longer. The link I had is now dead. The magazine is called American Police Beat, and you can find it in just about all PD offices, and correctional facilities. Seems they scoured that article. Whether it was done because it was old, and not archived, or because of the bad optics, is not known.
You bring up some good points. Thank you
It says a lot frankly that Iran is clearly worse than US policing. It’s a big problem in the US, and to be much worse than that…
I wish there was a clear way we could help them and Afghanistani women out.
Yeah. The US is fucking terrible in many respects for a ‘modern’ country, but the current Iranian government outright prides itself on being reactionary.