PARIS —
Iranian protesters remained defiant Monday with
students staging sit-ins and some industrial workers going on strike despite a
crackdown activists say has left dozens dead and hundreds more imprisoned.
اضافة اعلان
Videos posted on social media indicated that
protests flared at various points in the capital and other cities over recent
days, with women burning headscarves and shouting slogans against the Islamic
republic.
Kurdish rights group
Hengaw accused the authorities
of using heavy weaponry, including “shelling” on neighborhoods and “machine gun
fire”, in the northwestern city of Sanandaj — claims which could not be
independently confirmed amid widespread internet blocks.
Gunshots were also heard in Amini’s home town of
Saqqez, said the Norway-based group.
The unrest erupted over three weeks ago over the
death of
Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian woman of Kurdish origin who died following
her arrest by the notorious Tehran morality police who enforce the strict dress
rules on women including compulsory headscarves.
Activists say she was beaten in custody, while the
authorities in Iran have released a medical report blaming a pre-existing
condition.
The protests have channeled anger among some Iranian
women over the compulsory headscarf, but have also seen slogans shouted against
the Islamic system created by late revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the ousting of the shah in 1979.
Oslo-based non-government group
Iran Human Rights (IHR) shared images of a sit-in protest at the northern Gilan university and of
high school girls in the northern town of Mahabad removing their headscarves.
It also posted a video which it said showed a large
crowd of students outside Tehran polytechnic on Monday denouncing the “poverty
and corruption” in Iran and shouting “death to this tyranny”.
Workers on strike
Footage shared on social
media, including by news site Iran Wire, said students at Tehran women’s
university Al-Zahra shouted criticism of the regime during a visit Saturday by
President Ebrahim Raisi.
Student at universities including Tehran Azad also
painted their hands red to evoke the crackdown by the authorities on the
protests, images showed.
Analysts say that the multi-faceted nature of the
protests — ranging from street marches to student strikes to individual actions
of defiance — has complicated the state’s attempts to quell the movement.
This could make the protests an even bigger
challenge to the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83,
than the November 2019 protests against energy price hikes that were bloodily
put down.
One viral video was said to show a woman bare headed
in defiance of the dress code, in a street in the northwestern city of
Kermanshah with outstretched arms and offering “free hugs” to passers-by.
There have also been signs of labor unrest. Videos
broadcast by Persian media based outside Iran showed striking workers burning
tires outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the country’s southwest.
IHR said workers were blocking roads there, and
there were also reports of strikes at refineries in Abadan in the west of Iran
and Kengan in the south.
‘Chaos and disorder’
In an act of cyber defiance, the hacking group Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s
Justice) had posted an image during the main state TV evening news on Saturday
of Khamenei in crosshairs and being consumed by flames.
The crackdown on
the protests sparked by Amini’s death has claimed at least 95 lives according
to Norway-based group IHR.
Another 90 people
were killed by the security forces in Iran’s far southeastern city of Zahedan
from September 30 after protests sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl
by a police chief in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, said IHR, citing the
UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.
State media have
said 24 members of the security forces have been killed overall, including in
the Zahedan unrest.
Foreign ministry
spokesman
Nasser Kanani warned Monday the government would “not stand with its
hands tied in the face of chaos and disorder”.
Campaign groups including IHR have also pointed to videos showing
brutality by the security forces, including a defenseless protester beaten by
baton-wielding police while taking cover in a building.
Activists also
accuse the authorities of a campaign of mass arrests and travel bans to quell
the protests, with celebrities caught up in the dragnet.
Ali Daei, once the
world’s top international goal scorer in men’s football, had his passport confiscated
on returning to Tehran from abroad after bitterly criticizing the Islamic
republic on social media, Iranian media reported.
Daei told AFP on Monday
the passport was returned to him “after two or three days”.
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