PARIS —
Gunshots were fired as Iranian security forces confronted protests Wednesday
over
Mahsa Amini’s death in a crackdown that rights groups say has already cost
at least 108 lives with many children among the dead.
اضافة اعلان
The chants of protesters were interrupted by the
crack of gunfire in the cities off Isfahan and Karaj and in Amini’s hometown
Saqez, in videos shared by two Norway-based human rights organizations.
“Death to the dictator,” shouted female students who
had defiantly taken off their mandatory hijab headscarves as they marched down
a Tehran street, in a video verified by AFP.
Shots were heard in Isfahan amid the “nationwide
protests and strikes”,
Iran Human Rights (IHR) said of a video it tweeted, and
in Saqez, according to the Kurdish rights group Hengaw, which reported that
later “the security forces fled”.
Amini, 22, died on September 16 after falling into a
coma following her arrest in Tehran by the notorious morality police for an
alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
Young women, university students and even
schoolgirls have since taken off their hijabs and faced off with security
forces in the biggest wave of social unrest to grip Iran in almost three years.
At least 28 children have been killed and hundreds
more detained and held mostly in adult prisons, rights groups said.
Deadly unrest has rocked especially Sanandaj in
Amini’s western home province of Kurdistan — but also Zahedan in Iran’s far
southeast, where demonstrations erupted on September 30 over the reported rape
of a teenage girl by a police commander.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday
again accused Iran’s “enemies” of stoking “street riots”.
“The actions of the enemy, such as propaganda,
trying to influence minds, creating excitement, encouraging and even teaching
the manufacture of incendiary devices are now completely clear,” he said.
‘Bloody crackdown’ feared
Activists in Tehran called
for protesters to turn out “in solidarity with the people of Sanandaj and the
heroic people of Zahedan”.
“We don’t want spectators. Come and join us,” sang a
group of mainly young women outside Tehran’s Azad University, in IHR footage
verified by AFP.
The protest slogan “woman, life, freedom” was
spray-painted on the wall of the former US embassy — abandoned in the wake of
the 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis — but later painted
over, an image obtained by AFP showed.
Shops were shuttered in Sanandaj and people also
rallied in Shiraz and Mashhad, in other online footage.
A man who asked not to be identified told the BBC:
“The atmosphere is quite tense and yet it is exciting. People are hopeful this
time and we hope that a real change is just around the corner. I don’t think
people are willing to give up this time.
“You can hear some sort of protest everywhere,
almost every night. That feels good, that feels really good.”
IHR said the security forces had so far killed at
least 108 people, and at least another 93 people in Zahedan, while warning of
an “impending bloody crackdown” in Kurdistan.
It also said workers had joined protest strikes this
week at the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest, Abadan in the west
and Bushehr in the south.
In its widening crackdown, Iran has blocked access
to social media, including Instagram and WhatsApp, and launched a campaign of
mass arrests.
Online monitor NetBlocks on Twitter reported a
“major disruption to internet traffic” Wednesday which was “likely to further
limit the free flow of information”.
Missing children
The Tehran-based Children’s
Rights Protection Society, which reported the deaths of 28 minors, condemned
security forces for violence against children.
It criticized “families being kept in the dark on
their children’s whereabouts, cases proceeding without lawyers and a lack of
children’s judges and police”, and said the government must be held
accountable.
Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi
told Iranian media on October 5 that the “average age of the detainees from
many of the recent protests was 15”.
Human rights lawyer Hassan Raisi said around 300
people between the ages of 12 and 19 were in police custody, some of them in
detention centers for adult drug offenders.
Iran’s judiciary said more than 100 people had been
charged over the protests in Tehran and Hormozgan provinces alone.
An official Iranian forensic investigation found
Amini had died of a longstanding illness rather than reported beatings.
Her parents have denied this and filed a complaint
against the officers involved. One of her cousins, living in Iraq, has told AFP
she died of “a violent blow to the head”.
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