Iran’s parliamentary Education Commission has acknowledged that a number of students under the age of 18 were arrested during the crackdown on the January protests, while reporting that its official letter to the Law Enforcement Command regarding students who were killed or detained has gone unanswered.
Alireza Manadi Sefidan, head of the Education Commission, told the ILNA news agency on Friday, January 30, that in this letter the commission had asked not only about detained students, but also about the number of students who were killed or injured, adding: “So far, we have received no response to this letter.”
Farshad Ebrahim-pour Nourabadi, deputy head of the Education Commission, also stated: “What is certain is that among these individuals, there are a number of students under the age of 18.”
Ebrahim-pour, responding to the recent claim by the Ministry of Education that “most of those arrested were school dropouts and were only of school age,” said: “According to the law, all individuals from preschool age through the twelfth grade are considered students.”
Despite the lack of response from the Law Enforcement Command to the commission’s letter, this member of parliament claimed that “the treatment of students is carried out within a framework in which individuals under the age of 18 are subject to specific conditions and regulations.”
These official statements come as the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations announced on its Telegram channel, in a file titled “Empty Desks,” that as of January 30 it has published the names of 100 students who were killed during the violent crackdown by agents of the Islamic Republic government in January.
The council says it has published the names and images of these children based on reports from reliable networks and credible sources and will continue to complete the list.
The human rights organization HRANA has announced that as of January 29 it has been able to confirm the killing of approximately 6,100 protesters, including at least 118 children (under 18), and that it is still reviewing and verifying the identities of more than 17,000 other reported victims.
The Teachers’ Coordinating Council’s channel has also published numerous separate reports in recent days about detained students.
On Friday, January 30, the channel reported one such case involving “a student named Aso Keykhosravi, a 17-year-old student from Javanrud, who was arrested by security forces and has now been missing for three days. As of the time of publication, there is no information about his place of detention or his physical and psychological condition.”
In another case, the channel reported the arrest of Ali Eyvazi, a 16-year-old student from Baghmalek, in the early hours of January 19, 2026, “following a raid by more than 60 masked and armed forces on his home,” stating that “this teenager is under interrogation and security agents are pressuring him to make forced confessions against some of his relatives.”
Radio Farda has not been able to independently verify these details. However, Amnesty International announced on January 23 that independent sources and information collected by the organization indicate that the number of detainees has reached “tens of thousands,” including children and adolescents, university and school students, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and members of ethnic and religious minorities.
In one example, human rights sources had previously reported the transfer of “at least 150 women detained in connection with the nationwide protests—many of whom were female students—to the political ward of Adelabad Prison in Shiraz.”
These reports come amid accounts from citizens in various parts of Iran that government agents have been sent to schools to speak with students and impose the official state narrative regarding the protests.
In the government’s narrative, January protesters are described as “rioters and street terrorists” who allegedly fired on people and killed around 2,500 individuals. This is despite the widespread publication of numerous images and documents showing direct gunfire by government agents—using military weapons in particular, and often from the rooftops of state and government buildings—against civilians.
