Iran’s clerical leadership has struggled to quell protests that erupted in September after the death of young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by morality police for violating strict laws on women’s dress. Hundreds of people, mostly protesters, have been killed according to activists in one of the worst waves of unrest to sweep the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah. As Iranian authorities marked the anniversary this week of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, President Joe Biden supported the protesters, saying: “We will free Iran. They will be free very soon.” Students and women have led many of the current protests, with women throwing and burning veils in defiance of strict dress codes and students yelling at employees on campuses, according to unverified videos. “The Americans and other enemies tried to destabilize Iran by implementing the same plans as in Libya and Syria, but they failed,” Raisi, according to Iranian news agencies, told a group of students on Friday. A popular uprising in Libya led to NATO intervention in 2011 and the overthrow and assassination of the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi by rebel fighters. In Syria, mass protests against Iran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad were met with violence and the country descended into a conflict that continues 11 years later. Instead, Iran’s cities were now “safe and sound,” Raishi said, vowing retaliation for the turmoil the country had seen.
SLOGANS, CONSTRUCTION
Activist news agency HRANA reported that 314 protesters had been killed in the unrest as of Friday, including 47 minors. Around 38 members of the security forces had also been killed. At least 14,170 people were arrested, including 392 students, in protests in 136 cities and towns and 134 universities, it said. Some of the worst bloodshed has occurred in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, home to many of the predominantly Shiite Muslim country’s Sunni minority. Senior Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid said the response to Friday’s protests in the southeastern city of Khash was harsher than elsewhere in the country. “Should live ammunition be the answer to slogans and stones? One wonders…why are protesters in this province being mercilessly slaughtered?” the cleric asked in a statement on his website. Amnesty International said up to 10 people may have been killed when security forces opened fire on stone-throwing protesters who were reported to have attacked a government building. Students at a dozen universities in Tehran and Karaj, west of the capital, the northern city of Rasht and Mashhad in the northeast demonstrated on Saturday, chanting slogans such as “Woman, Life, Freedom,” according to videos posted by HRANA. Rights group Hengaw released a video it said came from Sanadai, the capital of Kurdistan province, of protesters setting fires to block a main road late Saturday. Demonstrations were also held in the cities of Bukan, Sakez and Marivan in the northwest. A social media video said to have originated in the southwestern city of Ahvaz shows a young man setting fire to a statue of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a 2020 US strike in Iraq. Reuters was unable to verify the videos. The crisis has pushed Iran’s currency to new lows. The US dollar was selling for 362,100 riyals on the informal market on Saturday, after losing nearly 12% of its value since the protests began, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com. In an apparent attempt to stem the currency’s slide, the government on Saturday approved online sales by currency dealers to make it easier for people to buy hard currency. The intelligence ministry said it had blocked the bank accounts of 2,300 people accused of involvement in the black currency market and that they may face legal action, state media reported. Report from the Dubai newsroom. Written by Dominic Evans. Editing by Andrew Heavens and David Holmes Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
