IRANIAN authorities have escalated their crackdown on women’s rights activists, journalists, singers and other campaigners, Amnesty International said on Monday.

The rights group warned that authorities are using arbitrary detention, unjust prosecution, flogging and even the death penalty in a bid to quash Iran’s women’s rights movement, with at least five activists held since International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8.

These arrests come amid an intensified crackdown including interrogating activists and journalists, arresting women singers for performing without the mandatory hijab and shutting down their social media accounts. 

Leila Pashaei was arrested from her home in Sanandaj on March 10 after speaking at an IWD event denouncing compulsory veiling, child marriage, violence against women and their executions.

“Women in Iran are held captive by authorities who fear the power of women,” she said. “The women’s movement has passed the point of no return. Women worldwide, especially in the Middle East, will never be silenced again.”

In the lead up to IWD, the authorities flogged a male singer 74 times for performing a protest song against Iran’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws and, in February 2025, sentenced a women’s rights activist to death.

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “In the wake of the Woman Life Freedom uprising of 2022, the Iranian authorities consider the widespread defiance of women and girls demanding their rights as an existential threat to the political and security establishment. 

“Instead of addressing systemic discrimination and violence against women and girls, they are attempting to crush Iran’s women’s rights movement.”

She added: “States must use their leverage to press the Iranian authorities to stop harassing women’s rights activists and immediately release those arbitrarily detained.”