PARIS — New protests erupted in Iran on
Sunday at universities and in the largely Kurdish northwest, keeping a
seven-week anti-government movement going even in the face of a fierce
crackdown.
اضافة اعلان
The protests, triggered in mid-September by the
death of
Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly breaching strict
dress rules for women, have evolved into the biggest challenge for the clerical
leadership since the 1979 revolution.
Unlike demonstrations in November 2019, they have
been nationwide, spread across social classes, universities, the streets and
even schools, showing no sign of letting up.
The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said security
forces opened fire on Sunday at a protest in Marivan, a town in Kurdistan
province, wounding 35 people.
It was not immediately possible to verify the toll.
The latest protest was sparked by the death in
Tehran of a Kurdish student from Marivan, Nasrin Ghadri, who according to
Hengaw died on Saturday after being beaten over the head by police.
Iranian authorities have not yet commented on the
cause of her death.
Hengaw said she was buried at dawn without a funeral
ceremony on the insistence of the authorities who feared the event could become
a protest flashpoint.
Images posted on social media showed protesters
threw stones at the official administration building and took down and burned
the Islamic republic’s flag. Residents, including women without headscarves,
marched through the streets.
Authorities sent reinforcements to the area and the
sound of gunfire echoed around the city as night fell, Hengaw added.
‘Fundamental changes’
Kurdish-populated regions
have been the crucible of protests since the death of Amini, herself a Kurd
from the town of Saqez in Kurdistan province.
Universities have also emerged as major protest
hotbeds.
Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based organization, said students at
Sharif University in Tehran were staging sit-ins Sunday in support of arrested
colleagues.
Students at the university in Babol in northern Iran
meanwhile removed gender segregation barriers that by law were erected in their
cafeteria, it added.
The protests have been sustained by myriad different
tactics, with observers noting a relatively new trend of young people tipping
off clerics’ turbans in the streets.
IHR said Saturday
that at least 186 people have been killed in the crackdown on the Mahsa Amini
protests, up by 10 from Wednesday.
It said another 118 people had lost their lives in
distinct protests since September 30 in Sistan-Baluchistan, a mainly Sunni
Muslim province in the southeast, presenting a further major headache for the
regime.
IHR said security forces killed at least 16 people
with live bullets when protests erupted after prayers on Friday in the town of
Khash in Sistan-Baluchistan.
“Iranians continue taking to the streets and are
more determined than ever to bring fundamental changes,” said IHR director
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. “The response from the Islamic republic is more
violence.”
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