(Paris) Women participated Friday in Sistan-Baluchistan in the demonstrations triggered in Iran by the death of Mahsa Amini two and a half months ago, a rare occurrence in this very conservative southeastern province, according to an NGO.
Iran has been rocked by a protest movement since the death on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurd arrested three days earlier in Tehran for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, including the obligation to wear the veil. for women.
In the streets of Zahedan, dozens of women held up banners reading “Woman, life, freedom”, one of the protesters’ main slogans, according to online videos.
“With or without the Islamic veil, forward the revolution! “, chanted women dressed in black chadors, according to images of videos posted on Twitter and verified by AFP.
“It’s rare” to see women demonstrating in Zahedan, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Oslo-based NGO, told AFP.
According to him, women in Sistan-Balochistan are among the “most oppressed” in Iran.
“Discrimination”
“Thanks to these demonstrations, women and minorities […] can take to the streets and claim their basic human rights,” said Mr. Amiry-Moghaddam.
Dozens of men also took to the streets on Friday in Zahedan, chanting “we don’t want a government that kills children,” according to other images of activists posted on social media.
According to the IHR, at least 128 people have been killed in Sistan-Balochistan since protests began in mid-September, including more than 90 on September 30 in Zahedan, during protests against the rape of a teenage girl blamed on a policeman.
Video released by IHR shows security forces firing shotguns and tear gas at protesters in Taftan, another town in Sistan-Balochistan.
This largely Sunni region, in a predominantly Shiite Iran, is the poorest in the country where the Baloch ethnic group is the subject of much discrimination, according to various NGOs.
According to experts, the Baluchis have taken their cue from the demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, initially motivated by the defense of women’s rights and which have spread to other demands.
“The Baloch minority suffers discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, decent housing and political responsibilities,” the NGO Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
These populations have “paid the price for the brutal repression of the security forces during the uprising that has swept Iran since September”, added in a press release the defense group of human rights based in London.
Kurdistan, located in western Iran near the Iraqi border, is the second region most affected by the crackdown with 53 dead, according to the IHR.
“Unprecedented pressures”
Tehran blames the violence in Kurdistan on opposition groups and has launched several strikes against Kurdish factions exiled in Iraq across the border.
Iran, which sees most of the demonstrations as “riots”, notably accuses foreign forces of being behind this movement to seek to destabilize the Islamic Republic.
A total of 448 protesters have been killed across the country since the protests began, according to IHR.
The Iranian authorities have recently reported, for the first time, the death of more than 300 people.
According to the UN, some 14,000 people have been arrested. At least 2,000 have been charged, according to judicial authorities.
UN experts expressed concern on Friday about the fate of dozens of people arbitrarily detained for two and a half months. They also called on Iran to release human rights activist Arash Sadeghi, arrested in October and suffering from a rare type of bone cancer.
The United States, Canada, Britain and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Iran, including over the crackdown on protests.
Since September 16, the Iranian authorities have summoned diplomats stationed in Tehran 12 times, including four times the British ambassador, in response to “unprecedented pressure against Iran”, according to the official Irna agency.