Iran: International Community Must Stand with Iranian People, Demand Accountability for Regime’s Escalating Repression

WASHINGTON-Amid ongoing reports of the Iranian regime's violent response to peaceful protests focused on the soaring cost of living in the country, Freedom House Presidents Gerardo Berthin and Annie Boyajian issued the following statement:

"Freedom House condemns the Iranian authorities' escalating and violent response to broad-based, peaceful protests across Iran-the largest since a nationwide uprising sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The regime's indiscriminate use of lethal force, mass arrests, intimidation, and collective punishment against students, bazaar merchants, women, workers, journalists, lawyers, and other members of civil society is yet another flagrant attempt to crush legitimate public dissent. It is also a stark reminder that the Iranian regime governs through violence and fear rather than the consent of its people.

"The Iranian people have experienced skyrocketing inflation, a result of the regime's widespread corruption and economic mismanagement. Last Sunday's initial protest, started by shopkeepers in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, has sparked a wave of protests across the country. The authorities have again met the people's legitimate demands for rights and accountability with coercion. This moment should be understood not as a series of isolated demonstrations against systemic dysfunction, graft, and repression, but as part of a longer, observable pattern in which peaceful civic engagement has continuously been criminalized and treated as a security threat by the Iranian regime.

"Rather than addressing grievances through dialogue or other legal channels, the authorities have chosen to meet legitimate demands for rights and accountability with intensified repression, further narrowing civic space and undermining public trust. Authorities have also restricted access to information through internet disruptions, censorship, and digital surveillance-measures that mirror a broader global authoritarian trend of weaponizing technology to suppress civic participation and shield state abuses from public scrutiny. We are greatly concerned about the heightened risks faced by human rights defenders and political prisoners in this environment. All of this is occurring in an environment plagued by decades of repression. Freedom House has documented persistent violations of the rights to peaceful assembly, free expression, and belief.

"Freedom House calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately cease the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators, release all individuals detained solely for exercising their fundamental rights, restore access to the internet and digital communications, and allow independent monitors to assess detention conditions. Reports of the deteriorating health of some prisoners, denial of due process, and retaliatory sentencing underscore the regime's use of imprisonment as a tool of repression.

"We also encourage the world's democracies to do far more than issue statements of concern. Democratic governments should coordinate sustained diplomatic pressure, including through expulsions of regime diplomats; levy targeted sanctions against officials responsible for serious human rights violations; and expand support for Iranian civil society, independent media, and secure means of access to information, including anticensorship tools, satellite internet, and encrypted communication platforms. Fragmented, muted, or short-lived responses by democracies could embolden the regime to engage in further abuses."

Iran is rated Not Freein Freedom in the World 2025 and Not Freein Freedom on the Net 2025.

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