Human rights activists on Sunday accused Iranian authorities of deploying military reinforcements to Kurdish areas where protests have intensified, saying they fear a tougher crackdown.
Armed forces were sent as reinforcements to the northwestern Iranian city of Mahabad on Saturday, the Iranian Kurdish rights group Hengaw said on Twitter on Sunday, adding that “gunfire were heard in residential areas”.
The Norway-based NGO posted images on social media that it said showed a helicopter flying over Mahabad with members of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, on board.
Also according to Hengaw, traders observed a strike on Sunday in protest against the repression.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the scene of a protest movement sparked on September 16 by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who was arrested by the morality police for breaking the strict dress code requiring women to wear the veil.
The first demonstrations had broken out in Kurdish localities in the northwest, in particular in Saghez, the birthplace of Mahsa Amini, before spreading to other cities.
“Electricity Cut”
Authorities have “cut off electricity in Mahabad and automatic gunfire is heard,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), wrote on Saturday evening. unconfirmed reports of protesters being killed or injured”.
He posted on Twitter an audio clip presented as taken in Mahabad, on which we can see shouting and shooting.
According to Hengaw, explosions were heard at dawn on Sunday in several towns in Kurdistan province, including Marivan, Boukan and Saghez. The situation is also “critical” in Divandarreh, where security forces killed three protesters on Saturday, the NGO added.
In Iran, the Tasnim news agency, approved by the authorities, claimed that “rioters attacked, looted and burned houses in Mahabad, including those belonging to police and soldiers”.
“Security is now restored there and businesses have reopened,” she added.
” To punish “
The Kurds represent one of the main ethnic minorities in Iran – about 10 million out of 83 million inhabitants – and mainly adhere to Sunni Islam, not the dominant Shiism in the country.
Since mid-September, the demonstrations have multiplied and then transformed into a vast movement against power, unprecedented since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
At least 378 people have been killed in the crackdown on the protests, according to a latest report released Saturday by IHR.
Among them, 255 died during the protests related to the death of Mahsa Amini and 123 in Sistan-Baluchistan, a poor province in the south-east of Iran, including more than 90 on September 30 in the provincial capital Zahedan, during demonstrations against the rape of a teenager attributed to a police officer.
Among the victims are 47 children, according to IHR.
While the Iranian authorities continue to blame the protest on “rioters”, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei promised on Saturday to “punish” the “perpetrators of murder and vandalism”.
Justice has so far sentenced six protesters for their involvement in the protests.
On Saturday, she summoned eight personalities from cinema, politics and sport, accused of having published “provocative” content in support of the protest.
On Sunday, two well-known actresses, Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, were arrested by the security services after removing their headscarves in public in an apparent sign of support for the movement, according to the official Irna agency.
The head of the Iranian Boxing Federation, who is in Spain for a competition, announced his decision not to return to Iran.
“I have decided not to return to Iran to be the voice of those whose voice is not heard by the authorities,” Hossein Souri said in a video released on Saturday.
And in Qatar, where the World Cup opened on Sunday, defender Ehsan Hajsafi said Iran’s national team wanted to be “the voice” of the people.