Iranians are again called to take to the streets on Wednesday to denounce the bloody crackdown on protests sparked almost a month ago by the death of Mahsa Amini, which claimed the lives of at least 108 people, according to an NGO.
“Be the voice of Sanandaj,” reads a leaflet distributed by activists and posted on social media.
This city, capital of Kurdistan, the northwestern province of Iran where Mahsa Amini was from, has been the scene of major protests that have been severely repressed, according to NGOs who have accused the authorities of having bombed certain neighborhoods of dwelling.
Despite hundreds of arrests and a deadly repression, the protest movement, the largest in Iran since that of 2019 against the rise in the price of gasoline, does not weaken.
It was sparked by the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died three days after she was arrested by vice police in Tehran for allegedly breaking the Republic’s strict dress code. Islam for women, including the wearing of the veil.
On Wednesday, activists called for new rallies “in solidarity with the people of Sanandaj”.
“The international community must prevent further murders in Kurdistan by providing an immediate response”, launched Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), warning against “an imminent bloody repression in this province.
According to the Norway-based IHR, at least 108 people have been killed in Iran in the crackdown on protests, during which protesters chanted “Woman, life, freedom” and “Death to the dictator”.
According to the NGO, 14 people were killed in Kurdistan, but this assessment does not include the victims of the “bloody repression” of the last three days, during which “large demonstrations” took place in Sanandaj. Elsewhere, 11 people were notably killed in the province of Tehran and 28 in that of Mazandaran (north), according to the IHR.
“Heroic people”
On Wednesday, the Iranian Judiciary said it had charged 125 people arrested during the “recent riots”.
School children had quickly joined the protest movement, shouting anti-regime slogans, while girls took off their veils, defying the police.
Unicef on Monday said it was “very concerned” about reports of “children and adolescents killed, injured and arrested”, while the Iranian Society for the Protection of Children’s Rights denounced the “violence” carried out against them.
At least 28 children have been killed in the crackdown, “most in the impoverished province of Sistan-Balochistan”, according to the Iran-based group.
Iranians are also called to demonstrate on Wednesday “in solidarity with the heroic people of Zahedan”, capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan (southeast) where security forces killed at least 93 other people in separate clashes , according to the IHR.
In this case, the violence had been triggered during demonstrations to protest against the alleged rape of a young girl by a police officer.
disrupted internet
On Monday, the protest extended to the oil sector, with strikes and rallies in the petrochemical plant of Assalouyeh (southwest), Abadan (west) or Bouchehr (south), according to the IHR.
The authorities have imposed restrictions on Internet access, hampering the NGO’s investigative work on the extent of the repression, deplored its director.
Before Wednesday’s demonstrations, scheduled from midday, the NetBlocks site, which observes Internet blockages around the world, noted in the morning “a major disruption of Internet traffic in Iran”.
This “will likely further limit the free flow of information amid protests over the death of Mahsa Amini,” he tweeted.
The Iranian authorities claimed that the young woman had died of illness and not of “blows”, according to a medical report, rejected by her father.
Analysts say the protests are proving particularly difficult for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, to manage because of their length and multifaceted nature, ranging from protests to individual acts of defiance.