For the 12th consecutive night, Iranians took to the streets on Tuesday in several cities across the country to protest the death of a young woman arrested by vice police, despite a crackdown that left dozens dead.
Even in the face of international calls to end the use of force, the government remained firm in the face of protesters accused of being “rioters” who “undermine security and public property”.
The protests have taken place every night since September 16, when Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian, died in hospital, three days after she was arrested in Tehran for breaking a strict dress code for women in Islamic Republic of Iran, who must cover their hair in public.
According to opposition media based outside Iran, protests resumed on Tuesday evening in various cities. But activists said disruptions to internet connections were making it increasingly difficult for the images to be transmitted.
In a video shared online by the opposition Manoto TV channel, a woman is shown without a headscarf and waving her arms in the air in Tehran’s Narmak district.
In Sanandaj, capital of the province of Kurdistan (north-west), where Mahsa Amini was from, women were seen removing their headscarves while a man burned a banner with a photo of the guide supreme Ali Khamenei in Shiraz (south), according to Iran International TV, based in London.
Ex-president’s daughter arrested
According to a latest report given Tuesday by the Iranian news agency Fars, “about 60 people have been killed” since September 16. Police reported 10 officers dead, but it was unclear if these were among the 60 dead.
The NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Oslo, reported on Monday “at least 76 dead”, including “six women and four children”, claiming to have obtained “videos and death certificates confirming live ammunition fired at demonstrators”.
In addition, authorities have reported the arrest of more than 1,200 protesters since September 16. Activists, lawyers and journalists have also been arrested, according to NGOs.
And on Tuesday, according to the Iranian news agency Tasnim, Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was arrested in Tehran for “inciting rioters to demonstrate”.
Shooting at protesters
Women are at the forefront of protests in Iran. They have been seen on several videos released by NGOs or activists, taking off their headscarves, climbing on car roofs or dancing.
Other videos in recent days have shown riot police beating protesters with batons and students tearing up large photos of Ayatollah Khamenei and his predecessor, Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.
And according to human rights defenders, the police also fired pellets and live ammunition at the protesters, who threw rocks, torched police cars and set fire to public buildings.
Health Minister Bahram Einollahi accused protesters of destroying 72 ambulances. The opposition abroad accuses the authorities of using ambulances to transport security forces.
To limit protests, authorities blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp in Iran. And in general, internet connections are disrupted.
” Restrictions [d’accès] remain in effect, but some videos of the protests manage to get out,” the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said.
Tehran evokes “foreign plots”
Iranian authorities have denied any physical contact between the morality police and the young Mahsa Amini after her arrest in Tehran, and say they are awaiting the results of the investigation.
They denounce “foreign plots” behind the protest movement, pointing the finger at the United States, their sworn enemy.
On Tuesday, in a new American reaction, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, denounced “the use of violence against women for exercising what should be a fundamental freedom”.
In addition, new demonstrations supporting women in Iran have taken place in several countries, in Cyprus, the United States and Austria.
The protests in Iran are the largest since those of November 2019, caused by the rise in gasoline prices in the country, which had been severely repressed (230 dead according to an official report, more than 300 according to Amnesty International).