Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi on Thursday ordered the opening of investigations into a clash between police and protesters that left dozens dead in the southeastern city of Zahedan. The massacre took place last Friday (30), in the wake of protests that have lasted three weeks in several cities of the Muslim nation.
According to Tehran, 20 people were killed, including six police officers, in addition to the regional intelligence chief of the Revolutionary Guard, the force responsible for conducting covert military operations abroad.
Amnesty International, however, said on Thursday that 82 people had died, 16 of them victims of clashes in other areas of Zahedan – hundreds were injured. The organization notes that some people died days after the massacre due to low supplies of blood, bandages and other medical supplies. Others are still seriously hospitalized.
Amnesty says security forces fired “live ammunition and tear gas” at protesters gathered outside a police station. “The evidence collected shows that most of the victims were hit by bullets in the head, heart, neck and torso, revealing a clear intention to kill or seriously injure”, says the NGO, which accuses security agents of having fired from the roof of the precinct.
The massacre would have been so massive that the French news agency AFP, following the rhetoric of human rights organizations, dubbed the episode “Bloody Friday” – recalling the way historians name a series of massacres against protesters in various periods of the world history, such as “Bloody Sunday” in the Russian Empire and Northern Ireland, and “Bloody Friday” itself in Brazil. .
Media close to the Iranian regime, on the other hand, described the clashes as a “terrorist incident” and Tehran accused the Sunni rebel group Jaish al-Adl of being behind the killings. The Sunni minority leader in Sistan-Baluchistan – where Zahedan is based – however, rejected the organization’s involvement. According to him, last Friday, “a group of soldiers, on foot and in vehicles, shot at people gathered around a mosque, killing and injuring several young people.”
The province of Sistan-Baluchistan, on the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a poor region, where attacks and clashes between security forces and armed groups frequently occur. The area is home to the Baluchi minority, who mainly adhere to Sunni Islam rather than Iran’s dominant Shi’ism.
Militants and NGOs have long lamented that the region suffers discrimination from the Shia religious establishment, with a disproportionate number of Baluchis killed annually in clashes with authorities or sentenced and executed. Amnesty estimates that in 2021 at least 19% of all those sentenced to death were Baluchi, even though the ethnic group represents less than 5% of the country’s population.
In any case, the Iranian regime indicated in a statement that Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi was there on Thursday at the order of the president to lead an in-depth investigation into the origins and causes of the violence that took place.
The director of the NGO Baluch Activists Campaign (BAC), Abdola Aref, told AFP that on Friday, protesters went to the police station to protest and, there, shouted slogans against the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some protesters reportedly threw stones at the police, who responded with gunfire. According to the activist, “many people were killed by snipers, including people who did not participate in the demonstrations.”
The violence in Zahedan comes as Iran faces a wave of protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl, on September 16. She died after being arrested by police in Tehran for allegedly not wearing the Islamic headscarf as dictated by the country’s strict dress code. The family says she was beaten and slipped into a coma.
Since then, 154 people have died during the demonstrations, according to Human Rights in Iran. It is uncertain whether the sum includes the 88 deaths in Zahedan cited by Amnesty.
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