ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran arrested at least 374 minors and educators over the past year, with more than four-fifths belonging to ethnic minority groups, according to a human rights watchdog, who confirmed to Rudaw that the majority of the arrests were undertaken during the nationwide January protests.
“At least 315 children under the age of 18, including school students, and 59 educators were arrested across Iran between late September 2025 and late September 2026,” according to a report published by Oslo-based Hengaw Human Rights Organization on Monday.
Hengaw told Rudaw English on Tuesday that “the majority of the arrests occurred over the protests in late December 2025 to early January of 2026.” Hengaw identified and verified the ethnicities of 190 of those arrested, of which 88 were Kurds, 30 Lors, 24 Baloch, six Arabs, three Turks, two Gilaks, and one Turkmen.
During the reporting period from September 2025-26, the Iranian judiciary sentenced at least eight children under the age of 18, whose terms ranged from six and a half months to more than 10 years.
Sixteen educators were sentenced to prison with terms ranging from eight months to 15 years, with one sentenced to just over three years in prison in addition to 74 lashes, according to Hengaw’s report.
Protests ensued in late December and early January of 2026 as shopkeepers and merchants in Tehran closed their businesses over soaring prices, inflation and the sharp fall in the value of Iran’s currency.
Demonstrations quickly spread across the country and grew into broader anti-government protests involving tens of thousands at its peak in the second week of January before authorities launched a lethal crackdown.
Iranian security forces killed at least 3,356 protesters and bystanders on January 8 and 9 alone, according to a new report by Oslo-based Iran Human Rights on Thursday, which published the names of more than 4,200 people it says were killed during the January protests, according to data it was able to independently verify against the backdrop of a national state-imposed internet blackout which lasted more than 20 days.
IHR was able to identify at least 281 children under the age of 18, noting that 25 of the children were younger than 14, with the youngest documented victim at just four and a half months old.
Rights groups have denounced the widespread impunity among Iranian security forces, saying authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate numerous allegations of excessive force, torture and sexual assault.
The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran submitted a report to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, outlining Iranian authorities’ use of lethal force at an ‘unprecedented’ scale to suppress nationwide protests in January, describing the crackdown as “beyond a simple continuation of familiar patterns.”
While Iranian authorities have said the number of deaths in the protests were 3,036 and around 25,000 people were injured, the UN fact-finding mission disputed those figures, saying it had “strong grounds to believe that the true figures” were “significantly higher” than those reported by the government.
In a different report, US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in February recorded 6,782 deaths, mostly protesters, as well as more than 50,000 arrests.
Waves of arrests, arbitrary detentions and executions are still ongoing more than eight months after the January protests.
Hengaw reported that security forces arrested at least 117 people in August, including two minors - one Kurdish and one Baloch. During the first six months of the year, Hengaw documented the arrests of at least 71 Kurdish minors and 23 Kurdish minors killed during the January protests.
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