Tehran on Thursday intensified pressure on celebrities and journalists in Iran, the scene of a wave of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini a few days after the arrest of the young woman by the morality police.
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Filmmakers, athletes, musicians and actors expressed their solidarity with protesters, including the national football team whose players wore black tracksuits during anthems performed ahead of a match in Vienna against Senegal.
“We are going to attack the celebrities who have blown on the embers” of the “riots”, declared the governor of the province of Tehran, Mohsen Mansouri, quoted Thursday by the news agency Isna, repeating the term used by the authorities to designate events.
The protest movement, the largest since 2019, was sparked by the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, three days after her arrest by the vice squad.
She was accused of violating Iran’s strict dress code, which notably requires women to wear the Islamic veil.
Red line
Iran’s justice chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, also pointed the finger at celebrities: “Those who became famous thanks to the support of the system, during the difficult days, joined the enemy instead of being with the people. All must know that they must repay the material and spiritual damage caused to the people and the country,” he said.
For his part, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned that despite “the pain and sorrow” caused by Amini’s death, public security was “the red line of the Islamic Republic” and that “nobody was authorized to break the law and cause chaos”.
On Thursday, a journalist who had covered Mahsa Amini’s funeral was arrested, her lawyer said. This arrest came after that of journalist Nilufar Hamedi, of the daily “Shargh”, who went to the hospital where Mahsa Amini was in a coma and helped publicize the case.
Around 60 people have been killed since the protests began on September 16, according to Iran’s Fars news agency, while the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights has reported a death toll of at least 76. .
Blaming the protests on outside forces, Iran on Wednesday carried out cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed 13 in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, accusing armed opposition groups based there of fueling the unrest .
Iran on Thursday summoned the French charge d’affaires, denouncing Paris’ “interference” in its internal affairs after Paris condemned the “violent repression” of protests.
‘Ruthless violence’
Demonstrations of solidarity with Iranian women have taken place around the world, and rallies are planned in 70 cities on Saturday.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban dispersed Thursday a rally in front of the Iranian embassy in Kabul of Afghan women who came to support the Iranian demonstrators, whose struggle they say they share. Taliban forces fired into the air and attempted to hit the protesters with rifle butts, according to AFP journalists.
In Norway, two people were slightly injured and about 90 arrested Thursday during clashes during a demonstration near the Iranian embassy in Oslo, according to the police.
In a statement to the Fars news agency, intelligence agents of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, said they had arrested 50 members of “an organized network” behind the “riots in the holy Shia city of Qom.
For its part, Amnesty International criticized the “widespread practices of unlawful use of force and ruthless violence by security forces” in Iran.
The NGO cited the use of live ammunition and metal balls, beatings and sexual violence against women, all “under the cover of continuous and deliberate disruptions of the Internet and mobile telephony”. .
“Dozens of people, including children, have been killed so far and hundreds injured,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of the London-based NGO.
In this context, the head of German diplomacy Annalena Baerbock indicated on Twitter that her country was calling for sanctions from the European Union against “those who in Iran beat women to death and slaughter protesters in the name of religion”.