Protesters in Iran take to the streets once more despite crackdown
Angry demonstrators took to streets across Iran again Saturday despite more than a hundred casualties and continued harsh pushback, including Internet access restrictions, as the protest movement sparked by Mahsa Amini's death in custody entered the fifth week.
The 22-year-old died on Sept. 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest in Tehran by Iran's morality police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.
Young women have been at the forefront of the biggest wave of street protests seen in the country for years.
"Guns, tanks, fireworks; the clerics must get lost," women without hijabs chanted at a gathering at Tehran's Shariati Technical and Vocational College in a video widely shared online.
A video posted by the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights purported to show protests in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran's second most populous city, with demonstrators chanting "Clerics get lost" and drivers honking their horns.
Scores of jeering and whistling protesters hurled projectiles at security forces near a landmark roundabout in Hamedan city, west of Tehran, in footage verified by AFP.
Despite what online monitor NetBlocks called a "major disruption to Internet traffic", protesters were also seen pouring onto the streets of the northwestern city of Ardabil in videos shared on Twitter.
Shopkeepers went on strike in Amini's hometown Saqez — in the Iranian province of Kurdistan — and Mahabad in West Azerbaijan, said the @1500tasvir social media channel that monitors protests and police violations.
They were responding to an appeal for a huge turnout for protests on Saturday under the catchcry "The beginning of the end!"
"We have to be present in the squares, because the best VPN these days is the street," activists declared, referring to virtual private networks used to skirt internet restrictions.
In response to the protests, one of Iran's main revolutionary bodies, the Islamic Development Coordination Council, has urged people to "express their revolutionary anger against sedition and rioters" after prayers on Saturday evening.
A call also went out this week for "retirees" of the Revolutionary Guards to meet on Saturday given "the current sensitive situation", according to a journalist at Shargh newspaper.
At the gathering, a Guards commander said three members of its Basij militia had been killed and 850 wounded in Tehran since the start of the "sedition", state news agency IRNA said.
The women-led protests have won support from the US president.
"I want you to know that we stand with the citizens, the brave women of Iran," Joe Biden said late Friday.
"It stunned me what it awakened in Iran. It awakened something that I don't think will be quieted for a long, long time."
Iran "has to end the violence against its own citizens simply exercising their fundamental rights", the US leader added.
At least 108 people have been killed in the Amini protests, and at least 93 more have died in separate clashes in Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, according to the Iran Human Rights group.
The unrest has continued despite what Amnesty International has called an "unrelenting brutal crackdown" that has included an "all-out attack on child protesters", leading to the deaths of at least 23 minors, including young girls.
Protesters called on Saturday for demonstrations in the northwestern city of Ardabil over the death of Asra Panahi, a teenage girl from the Azeri ethnic minority who activists say was beaten to death by security forces.
Officials denied the report, and news agencies close to the Revolutionary Guards quoted her uncle as saying the high school student had died of a heart problem.
The crackdown has drawn international condemnation and sanctions on Iran from the UK, Canada and the US.
Iran's supreme leader has accused the country's enemies, including the US and Israel, of fomenting the "riots".
In his toughest warning yet to protesters, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — whose downfall many demonstrators have demanded — said on Friday that no one should dare think they can uproot the Islamic Republic.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has called on the EU to adopt a "realistic approach" to the Amini protests as the bloc prepares to impose new sanctions on the Islamic republic.
"Who would believe that the death of one girl is so important to Westerners?" he said in a statement on Friday.
"If it is so, what did they do regarding the hundreds of thousands of martyrs and deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon?" he added.
EU countries agreed this week to level new sanctions, and the move is due to be endorsed at the bloc's foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
In response to the protests, the clerical state's security forces have also launched a campaign of mass arrests of artists, dissidents, journalists and athletes.
Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi said the authorities barred him from traveling to the London Film Festival over his support for the protests.
The British Film Institute said Haghighi had been due to attend the festival for his latest film "Subtraction", but the Iranian authorities "confiscated his passport".
"I cannot put into words the joy and the honor of being able to witness first-hand this great moment in history," said Haghighi.
"So if this is a punishment for what I've done, then by all means, bring it on."
Young women have been at the forefront of the biggest wave of street protests seen in the country for years.
"Guns, tanks, fireworks; the clerics must get lost," women without hijabs chanted at a gathering at Tehran's Shariati Technical and Vocational College in a video widely shared online.
A video posted by the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights purported to show protests in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran's second most populous city, with demonstrators chanting "Clerics get lost" and drivers honking their horns.
Scores of jeering and whistling protesters hurled projectiles at security forces near a landmark roundabout in Hamedan city, west of Tehran, in footage verified by AFP.
Despite what online monitor NetBlocks called a "major disruption to Internet traffic", protesters were also seen pouring onto the streets of the northwestern city of Ardabil in videos shared on Twitter.
Shopkeepers went on strike in Amini's hometown Saqez — in the Iranian province of Kurdistan — and Mahabad in West Azerbaijan, said the @1500tasvir social media channel that monitors protests and police violations.
They were responding to an appeal for a huge turnout for protests on Saturday under the catchcry "The beginning of the end!"
"We have to be present in the squares, because the best VPN these days is the street," activists declared, referring to virtual private networks used to skirt internet restrictions.
In response to the protests, one of Iran's main revolutionary bodies, the Islamic Development Coordination Council, has urged people to "express their revolutionary anger against sedition and rioters" after prayers on Saturday evening.
A call also went out this week for "retirees" of the Revolutionary Guards to meet on Saturday given "the current sensitive situation", according to a journalist at Shargh newspaper.
At the gathering, a Guards commander said three members of its Basij militia had been killed and 850 wounded in Tehran since the start of the "sedition", state news agency IRNA said.
The women-led protests have won support from the US president.
"I want you to know that we stand with the citizens, the brave women of Iran," Joe Biden said late Friday.
"It stunned me what it awakened in Iran. It awakened something that I don't think will be quieted for a long, long time."
Iran "has to end the violence against its own citizens simply exercising their fundamental rights", the US leader added.
At least 108 people have been killed in the Amini protests, and at least 93 more have died in separate clashes in Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, according to the Iran Human Rights group.
The unrest has continued despite what Amnesty International has called an "unrelenting brutal crackdown" that has included an "all-out attack on child protesters", leading to the deaths of at least 23 minors, including young girls.
Protesters called on Saturday for demonstrations in the northwestern city of Ardabil over the death of Asra Panahi, a teenage girl from the Azeri ethnic minority who activists say was beaten to death by security forces.
Officials denied the report, and news agencies close to the Revolutionary Guards quoted her uncle as saying the high school student had died of a heart problem.
The crackdown has drawn international condemnation and sanctions on Iran from the UK, Canada and the US.
Iran's supreme leader has accused the country's enemies, including the US and Israel, of fomenting the "riots".
In his toughest warning yet to protesters, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — whose downfall many demonstrators have demanded — said on Friday that no one should dare think they can uproot the Islamic Republic.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has called on the EU to adopt a "realistic approach" to the Amini protests as the bloc prepares to impose new sanctions on the Islamic republic.
"Who would believe that the death of one girl is so important to Westerners?" he said in a statement on Friday.
"If it is so, what did they do regarding the hundreds of thousands of martyrs and deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon?" he added.
EU countries agreed this week to level new sanctions, and the move is due to be endorsed at the bloc's foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
In response to the protests, the clerical state's security forces have also launched a campaign of mass arrests of artists, dissidents, journalists and athletes.
Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi said the authorities barred him from traveling to the London Film Festival over his support for the protests.
The British Film Institute said Haghighi had been due to attend the festival for his latest film "Subtraction", but the Iranian authorities "confiscated his passport".
"I cannot put into words the joy and the honor of being able to witness first-hand this great moment in history," said Haghighi.
"So if this is a punishment for what I've done, then by all means, bring it on."
