Iran’s security forces again clashed with protesters on Wednesday. This time, the setting was the city of Saqez, in Kurdistan, where Mahsa Amini was born and buried after dying 40 days ago in the custody of the country’s moral police.
According to news agencies, thousands of people gathered at the memorial dedicated to the woman to pay their respects – in Iran, the traditional mourning period lasts exactly 40 days. Earlier, however, according to activists, authorities had already warned the girl’s parents not to organize ceremonies and threatened to arrest the couple’s son if the protests took place, which authorities deny.
In any case, the supposed warning was ignored and, on Wednesday, Iranian agents reportedly shot at some of the 2,000 protesters and arrested dozens of them. “Security forces fired tear gas and opened fire on people in Zindan square in Saqez,” the Norwegian-based human rights group Hengaw said on Twitter.
Videos published earlier by the organization show police patrolling the streets of the city, which has had entrances blocked since Tuesday night (25). The regime-linked ISNA news agency confirmed the clashes and reported that the internet in Saqez had been cut off “due to security concerns” – the blockade is used by various regimes around the world to contain protest organizations via social media. .
Before the repression, however, protesters sang “Mulher. Vida. Liberdade”, a symbol of the demonstrations of recent weeks in the country, the biggest since at least 2019. There were also those who called for the “death of the dictator”, in reference to the Islamic regime. commanded by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Among the protesters were two Iranian football stars. According to Hengaw, the country’s all-time greatest player, Ali Daei, once stayed at a hotel in Saqez, but had to be transferred to a state hotel on the orders of security forces. He was accompanied by goalkeeper Hamed Lak, who currently plays for a club in the country.
Demonstrations are also recorded in other cities, such as the capital Tehran. In addition, higher education students have scheduled protests at the university – in recent weeks, students from schools and colleges have been leading part of the demonstrations against the Islamic regime. Also on Wednesday, by the way, authorities closed all educational institutions in Kurdistan “due to a wave of flu”.
On the other hand, the governor of the region, Zarei Koosha, told local media that the situation was normal in the province. “The enemy and its media are trying to use the 40th day of Mahsa Amini’s death as a pretext to provoke new tensions, but fortunately the situation in the province is completely stable,” he declared.
The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died on 16 September after being detained for three days by moral police while visiting Tehran with her brother. She was accused of allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code, which requires women to wear a veil.
The regime alleges that Amini died as a result of a heart problem, a version that the family and activists dispute – she would have been the victim of aggression by the agents. The girl’s father claims he was prevented from seeing the autopsy report on his daughter’s body.
The crackdown on protests in the country has killed at least 141 people, including 29 minors, according to the NGO Human Rights of Iran. The Iranian government, on the other hand, only discloses that 30 members of the security forces have been killed since the beginning of the protests. At the same time, several protesters were arrested, including university professors, journalists and celebrities – some could even face the death penalty.
As a way to contain the Iranian government’s repression, the US and European Union led a series of sanctions against Tehran and key officials in the country. On Wednesday, incidentally, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on prison officials, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and two entities accused of “efforts to disrupt digital freedom” in the Middle Eastern country.
However, the ability of these sanctions to influence Tehran’s actions is uncertain. The Islamic regime has been the target of blockades of this type for years and, although it suffers from economic crises, it has never lost support from a considerable part of the population.
Also on Wednesday, Tehran announced sanctions against media outlets in EU countries, such as the Persian versions of Deutsche Welle and RFI. The list also includes European politicians
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