PARIS —
Iranian security forces opened fire on protesters who massed in their thousands
Wednesday in Mahsa Amini’s hometown to mark 40 days since her death, according
to a rights group and verified videos.
اضافة اعلان
Amini, a
22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died on September 16, three days after
her arrest in Tehran by the notorious morality police for allegedly breaching
the Islamic dress code for women.
Anger flared at
her funeral and quickly sparked widespread protests that saw young women lead the
charge, burning their headscarves and confronting security forces, in the
biggest wave of unrest in the Islamic republic for years.
Despite
heightened security measures, columns of mourners had poured into Saqez in the
western Kurdistan province to pay tribute to Amini at her grave at the end of
the traditional mourning period.
In a viral
picture of the scene verified by AFP, a young woman was seen standing on the
roof of a car without a hijab head covering, looking into the distance at the
highway packed with scores of vehicles and mourners.
“Death to the
dictator,” mourners chanted at the Aichi cemetery outside Saqez, before many
were seen heading to the governor’s office in the city center, where Iranian
media outlets said some were poised to attack an army base.
“Security forces
have shot tear gas and opened fire on people in Zindan square, Saqez city,”
Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish
regions, said without specifying whether there were any dead or wounded.
Iran’s ISNA news
agency said the internet had been cut in Saqez for “security reasons”, and that
nearly 10,000 people had gathered in the city.
But many
thousands more were seen making their way in cars, on motorbikes and on foot
along a highway, through fields and even across a river, in videos widely
shared online.
‘Year of blood’
Noisily clapping, shouting and honking car horns, mourners packed the
highway linking Saqez to the cemetery 8km away, in images that Hengaw told AFP
it had verified.
ISNA said some
of the crowd returning from the cemetery had “intended to attack an army base”,
until they were dispersed by other participants.
A police
checkpoint was torched and fires burned along a bridge in the Qavakh
neighborhood of Saqez, in a verified video.
“This year is
the year of blood, Seyed Ali will be toppled,” a group of them chanted in a
video verified by AFP, referring to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
“Kurdistan,
Kurdistan, the graveyard of fascists,” others were heard singing in a video
shared by activists on Twitter. AFP was unable to immediately verify the
footage.
Hengaw said
workers went on strike in
Saqez as well as Divandarreh, Marivan, Kamyaran and
Sanandaj, and in Javanrud and Ravansar in the western province of Kermanshah.
‘Foes behind
unrest’
Kurdistan Governor Esmail Zarei-Kousha accused Iran’s foes of being
behind the unrest.
“The enemy and
its media ... are trying to use the 40-day anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death
as a pretext to cause new tensions but fortunately the situation in the
province is completely stable,” he said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
The social media
channel 1500tasvir, which chronicles rights violations by Iran’s security
forces, said fresh protests flared at universities in Tehran, Mashhad in Iran’s
northeast, and Ahvaz in the southwest, among others.
Oslo-based group
Iran Human Rights said the security forces’ crackdown on the Amini protests has
claimed the lives of at least 141 demonstrators, in an updated death toll
Tuesday.
Amnesty
International says the “unrelenting brutal crackdown” has killed at least 23
children, while IHR said at least 29 children have been slain.
More than five weeks
after Amini’s death, the demonstrations show no signs of ending. They have been
fuelled by public outrage over the crackdown that has claimed the lives of
other young women and girls.
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