‘I will never wear a headscarf again’: Outrage in Iran after woman dies in custody

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4 minute readOctober 11, 20228:47 AM EDTLast Updated 2 hours ago

Iran protests over woman's death persist despite crackdown​

Reuters
People take part in a protest following the death of Mahsa Amini, in Istanbul

Demonstrators shout slogans during a protest following the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, near the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey September 29, 2022. REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya/File Photo
  • Summary
  • Protesters are calling for end to clerical rule
  • Social media show tanks being moved to Kurdish regions
  • Iran blames Iranian Kurdish dissidents for some unrest
  • Protests spread to vital energy sector


DUBAI, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Clashes between protesters and security forces persisted across Iran on Tuesday, with social media videos showing tanks being transported to Kurdish areas, which have been a focal point of the crackdown on protests over Mahsa Amini's death in custody.

Protests calling for the fall of the clerical establishment have swept Iran since Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, died on Sept. 16 while being detained by the morality police in Tehran for "inappropriate attire".


While observers do not believe the unrest is close to toppling the government, the protests mark one of the boldest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution, with reports of strikes spreading to the vital energy sector.

The authorities are waging a deadly crackdown. Videos on social media showed trucks moving dark green tanks to Kurdish areas, raising the stakes in the revolt. Reuters could not verify the video footage.

At least 185 people, including 19 minors, have been killed, hundreds injured and thousands have been arrested by the security forces, according to rights groups. The government says more than 20 members of the security forces have been killed.

Iranian authorities have said they will investigate civilian deaths.

Tensions have been especially high in Kurdish regions, given Amini's ethnic background. Human rights groups say Iran's Kurdish minority of more than 10 million has long been oppressed - a charge the Islamic Republic denies.


The Kurdistan Human Rights Network said the protests were continuing for a fourth week in those regions "despite the tense security atmosphere and the militarization of these cities".

It said security forces had killed at least 30 protesters, injured another 825, and arrested more than 2,000 in the predominantly Kurdish regions.

Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The Hengaw human rights group said on Monday security forces had fired towards residences in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj.

The Iranian authorities have blamed the violence on an array of enemies including armed Iranian Kurdish dissidents, with the Revolutionary Guards attacking their bases in neighbouring Iraq a number of times during the latest unrest.

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi reiterated accusations that Iranian Kurdish dissident groups were supporting the protests and said security forces would "neutralize the desperate anti-revolutionary effort".

ENERGY SECTOR​

Unrest continued elsewhere overnight after demonstrations spread into Iran's vital energy sector, according to videos on social media which Reuters could not confirm.

Energy installations in southwestern Iran were hit by strikes for a second day on Tuesday, with workers protesting at the Abadan oil refinery, Kangan and the Bushehr petrochemical plant, according to the widely followed Tavsir1500 Twitter account.

Videos posted on the account showed a few dozen workers chanting "Death to the dictator", referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A regional official said on Tuesday the workers at the Assaluye plant were angered by a dispute over wages and were not protesting over Amini's death.

Governor Ali Hashemi said some Iranians had tried to hijack the workers' protests by chanting anti-government slogans, according to Iran’s Young Journalists Club News (YJC) Telegram account.

It was a combination of mass protests and strikes by oil workers and bazaar merchants that helped to propel the Shi'ite clergy to power in the Iranian revolution four decades ago.

Dozens of universities are also currently on strike, with students playing a pivotal role in the protests.

Meanwhile, in the city of Fuladshahr in the central province of Isfahan protesters set fire to the office of a prayer leader, according to a video posted by Tavsir1500.

The authorities' crackdown on protesters has prompted some Western states to draw up more sanctions on Iran, stoking diplomatic tensions at a time when talks to revive Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers are at a standstill.

France's foreign minister said on Tuesday five of its nationals were being held in Iran and the European Union had agreed the technical aspects to impose sanctions on Tehran, which would come into force next week.

France lashed out at Iran on Oct. 6 accusing it of "dictatorial practices" and taking its citizens hostage after a video was aired in which a French couple appeared to confess to spying.
 

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Protests reach 19 cities in Iran despite internet disruption​

By JON GAMBRELLyesterday


This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)

This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Protests swept across at least 19 cities in Iran on Wednesday sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained last month by the country’s morality police, even as security forces targeted demonstrators in the streets, activists said.

The protests over the death of Mahsa Amini have become one of the greatest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 Green Movement. Demonstrators have included oil workers, high school students and women marching without their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

Calls for protests beginning at noon Wednesday saw a massive deployment of riot police and plainclothes officers throughout Tehran and other cities, witnesses said and videos showed. Witnesses also described disruptions affecting their mobile internet services.

NetBlocks, an advocacy group, said that Iran’s internet traffic had dropped to some 25% compared to the peak, even during a working day in which students were in class across the country.

“The incident is likely to further limit the free flow of information amid protests,” NetBlocks said.

Despite the disruption, witnesses saw at least one demonstration in Tehran by some 30 women who had removed their headscarves while chanting: “Death to the dictator!” Those cries, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can result in a closed-door trial in the country’s Revolutionary Court with the threat of a death sentence.

Passing cars honked in support of the women despite the threats of security forces. Other women simply continued with their day not wearing the hijab in a silent protest, witnesses said. Demonstrations also occurred on university campuses in Tehran as well, online videos purported to show.

Lawyers also peacefully demonstrated in front of the Iran Central Bar Association in Tehran, chanting: “Woman, life, freedom” — a slogan of the demonstrations so far. The video corresponded to known features of the association’s building. A later video showed them fleeing after security forces fired tear gas at them, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said.

At least three lawyers were among the some two dozen arrested there, the center said.

“Lawyers willing to defend detainees arrested for peaceful protest are the last lifeline for a citizenry under attack by the Iranian government,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the center’s executive director. “Protests must be allowed without the threat of lethal state violence or arbitrary arrest.”

The center said it tracked protests in at least 19 cities across Iran.

Gathering information about the demonstrations remains difficult amid the internet restrictions and the arrests of at least 40 journalists in the country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating after she was detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their hijabs.

Khamenei, speaking Wednesday to the country’s Expediency Council, again claimed Iran’s foreign enemies had fomented what he dismissed as “scattered” demonstrations.

“Some of these persons are elements of the enemy and if they are not, they are in the direction of the enemy,” Khamenei said.

Iranian state television, long controlled by the country’s hard-liners, aired footage it described as women protesting in support of the mandatory hijab across Iran. Only Afghanistan and Iran mandate the hijab in law and by force.

Anger has been particularly acute in western Iran’s Kurdish regions, as Amini was Kurdish. On Wednesday, a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed images of closed shops and empty streets in some areas, describing it as a strike by shopkeepers.

The group also posted a video it said came from Amini’s hometown of Saqqez, which showed truckloads of riot police moving through the city.

While the demonstrations have focused on Amini’s death, anger has been simmering in Iran for years over the country’s cratering economy. Sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program have seen a collapse in the country’s rial currency, wiping out the savings of many.

It remains unclear how many people have been killed or arrested so far in the protests.

An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimated Wednesday that at least 201 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.

Numerous videos have emerged of riot police shooting into crowds, with some likely using live fire. Apparently feeling the pressure from the public, Iran’s police chief, Gen. Hossein Ashtari, claimed on state television Wednesday without providing evidence that “counterrevolutionary groups abroad” wore police uniforms and fired into the crowds. He claimed his officers had made arrests of some of those people.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Education Minister Yousof Nouri offered the first confirmation that school-age children had been arrested amid the protests. He declined to offer a figure for those arrest, the newspaper Shargh reported, only saying those detained had been put “in a psychiatric center,” not in jail.
 

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Iranian official admits that student protesters are being taken to psychiatric institutions​


By CNN staff
Updated 11:02 PM EDT, Wed October 12, 2022


03:03 - Source: CNN
Video: Police forcefully drag man and pregnant wife despite pleas

CNN —
As women burn headscarves and cut off their hair in nationwide protests, an Iranian official on Tuesday said that school students participating in street protests are being detained and taken to mental health institutions.

In an interview with an independent reformist Iranian newspaper, Iran’s Education Minister Yousef Nouri confirmed that some school students have indeed been detained and referred to what he called “psychological institutions.”

The establishments holding the students, he said, are meant to reform and reeducate the students to prevent “anti-social” behavior.

“It is possible these students have become ‘anti-social characters’ and we want to reform them,” he told the Shargh newspaper, adding that the students “can return to class after they’ve been reformed.”

Nearly a month ago, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after being taken to a “reeducation center” by state “morality police” for not abiding by the state’s conservative dress code. Amini’s death has sparked weeks of anti-government protests that have spread across the country.

The education minister could not put an exact figure on the number of detained students, saying “the number is not a lot and there are not many.”

Girls and women across Iran have played a vital role in the demonstrations, and in recent weeks have protested at schools, university campuses and out on the streets.

Footage circulated across social media has showed Iranian women and girls chanting “death to the dictator” as they take off their headscarves; on one occasion, CNN witnessed girls from a vocational high school in Tehran protesting on a street near their school and chanting, “woman, life, freedom.”

The demonstrations have, at times, turned dangerous. Police fired tear gas on protesters in Tehran on Wednesday, and book shops and offices near Tehran University shut their doors as anti-riot police chased and fired rubber bullets on demonstrators, an eyewitness said. In Kaj Square, members of Iran’s Basij paramilitary organization ordered people to move along and stopped others from standing on the streets, according to the eyewitness.

Videos obtained by the pro-reform activist outlet IranWire posted on social media on Wednesday showed demonstrations across Tehran and other Iranian cities.

Police and Basij members fired tear gas at the gathering of Iranian lawyers in Tehran, while uniformed and plainclothes police were seen firing weapons in the air in West Tehran, dispersing people from the scene. In one of the busiest shopping streets in the city, riot police were seen gathering. In another, protesters chanted “Mullahs, get lost.”

Footage from Rasht, northwest of Tehran, showed police wearing riot gear beating people with batons and pulling them from the sidewalk

On Tuesday, the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF called for the protection of children and adolescents amid public unrest in Iran, which is now in its third week.

“We are extremely concerned by continuing reports of children and adolescents being killed, injured and detained amid the ongoing public unrest in Iran,” read the UNICEF statement.
 
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