PARIS — Students demonstrated in
Tehran and
other Iranian cities Saturday against an ongoing crackdown on dissent over the
death last month of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the Islamic republic’s
notorious morality police.
اضافة اعلان
Iranians based abroad and their supporters gathered
in cities around the world in solidarity.
A wave of street
violence has rocked Iran since Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, died after
her arrest by the morality police for allegedly failing to observe the Islamic
republic’s strict dress code for women.
Protests were held across Iran for a 15th
consecutive night on Friday, despite a bloody crackdown that a rights group
says has claimed more than 80 lives.
“Woman, life,
freedom” and “Death to the dictator”, they chanted in the streets of Amini’s
hometown of Saqqez, in Kurdistan province.
On Saturday, riot police massed at major road
junctions across the capital, as students gathered in
Enghelab (Revolution)
Square near Tehran University in the city center to press for the release of
arrested students.
Police clashed with the protesters who were chanting
slogans and arrested some of them, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Video footage shared by the Oslo-based Iran Human
Rights group also showed student protests in other cities, including second
city Mashhad and Karaj, west of the capital. The protesters were seen chanting
and women having removed their headscarves.
Demonstrations of support were called in 159 cities
across the globe — from Auckland to New York and Seoul to Zurich, the Iranians
for Justice and Human Rights group said.
In Tokyo, demonstrators waved pictures of Amini and
other women who had defiantly burned their headscarves and cut their hair
during the Iranian protests.
In Rome, a half dozen women cut their hair in
solidarity.
Arrests of foreigners
The protests flared in Iran on September 16, when Amini was
pronounced dead three days after falling into a coma following her arrest.
Iran Human Rights group says at least 83 people have
been killed in the crackdown. Amnesty International says it has confirmed 52
fatalities, while Iran’s Fars agency has put the death toll at “around 60”.
It is the bloodiest unrest in Iran since a ruthless
crackdown on demonstrations in November 2019 over a sudden hike in fuel prices
that killed at least 304 people, according to Amnesty.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister who has
been under house arrest for more than a decade, urged security forces to halt
the violence, in a message on the Instagram account of opposition group Kaleme.
Iran’s
intelligence ministry said Friday that “nine foreign nationals”, including from
France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands, and Poland, were arrested “at or
behind the scene of riots”, along with 256 members of outlawed opposition
groups.
Unrest also erupted on Friday in Iran’s southeastern
Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said two of
its colonels were killed, bringing the official toll to 20 dead during clashes
in the province where three police stations were attacked.
“Several chain stores were looted and set on fire,
and a number of banks and government centers were also damaged,” said
Sistan-Baluchestan governor Hossein Khiabani.
Poverty-stricken Sistan-Baluchestan is a flashpoint
for clashes with drug smuggling gangs, as well as rebels from the Baluchi
minority and Sunni Muslim extremist groups.
Iran has blamed outside forces for the nationwide
protests.
On Wednesday, the
Revolutionary Guards launched
cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed 14 people in autonomous
Iraqi Kurdistan, accusing rebel groups in the region of fueling the unrest.
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