Unarmed Kurdish boys and men who work as porters, crossing perilous mountain passes, continue to be shot and killed by Iranian border guards.
Hundreds have been killed or seriously injured in recent years, moving between Iran and Iraq. Some 231 deaths were recorded in 2018 by Hengaw, an Independent Human Rights Organization reporting on violations in the Kurdish areas in the west of Iran. Between March 2019 and March 2020, a further 237 were killed or injured, most also as the result of direct firing by border guards.1 At least four more were shot and killed in May 2020, and a fifth froze to death.
