A month after the start of the nationwide protests, Iranian forces are trying to drive the demonstrators off the streets using military force. People across the country are protesting against the mullahs’ regime and the compulsory headscarf. It’s no longer about women’s rights, but about the end of the 43-year-old theocracy.
On Friday, about six weeks after the death of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, more than ten thousand people marched to her grave in her hometown of Saqqez. The 22-year-old was arrested by officers in Tehran on September 16, allegedly because some hair was sticking out from under her headscarf. According to her family, she died after being severely beaten by officers at the police station, but the authorities did not allow a serious investigation into the circumstances of her death. Weeks of protests in Iranian-Kurdish-majority Saqquez have sparked the wave of civil resistance that could topple the mullahs, who have ruled for 43 years.
More than 130 people are said to have died in Sahedan
While the protests of recent years have been limited to the capital or different social groups, people are now protesting across the country. In the city of Sahedan, for example, police officers there apparently fired live ammunition into the crowd indiscriminately over the past week. Activists from the city, around 1,600 kilometers from Tehran, reported to the SZ on the phone that an unknown number of protesters were killed or injured, but the protests are ongoing. The human rights organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) released a mobile phone video taken from the crowd, in which minutes of gunfire from automatic weapons can be heard. According to the human rights activists, there were 93 known fatalities in the attack on the unarmed demonstrators.
The Iranian state news agency IRNA spread a completely different version of what was happening in the capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan: Masked rioters threw stones at cars and security forces, and the police brought the situation back under control after a special operation.
When a police station was stormed on September 30, 35 civilians and 6 police officers died in Sahedan. The riot was triggered by the alleged rape of a previously arrested girl by a police officer. After Friday prayers, 150 citizens stormed the police station, where police officers take all women who attract attention in public without a headscarf or with slogans critical of the regime.
The wave of indignation against the actions of the emergency services goes through all social classes in Sahedan. Open criticism by Shia and Sunni clerics of the wave of arrests in Sahedan, which has been going on for weeks, has forced the Iranian authorities to admit the misconduct of their security forces for the first time. The Sahedan police chief had to vacate his post. The so-called Provincial Security Council, a state control agency, justified the dismissal of further police officers with the misconduct of the officers in the storming of the station.
The wave of outrage over the brutality of the forces has now reached the religious stronghold of Mashad
But the Iranians are no longer satisfied with the dismissal of those responsible at the local level. More and more citizens feel that the regime’s days may be numbered. But they want to stay in power by any means necessary. This is another reason why the authorities fear losing control over entire cities like Sahedan. The police units have allegedly already withdrawn from the city of Mahabad, which has a population of 250,000.
In the Kurdish regions of Iran, the internet has been shut down indefinitely for “security reasons”. Yet new videos of atrocities are leaking onto Iranians’ cellphones every day. It shows the bodies of previously arrested students being handed over without comment. Other footage shows how police officers, in the middle of Tehran’s rush-hour traffic, place a pedestrian who has been shot in a black sack and throw him into a car.
The wave of outrage over the brutality of the forces has now reached the religious stronghold of Mashad, where students at Sajjad University tore down the huge posters of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini and head of state Ali Khamenei.
After an attack in Shiraz, human rights activists are warning of a possible development like that in Syria
“Death to the dictator” chants echoed through Tehran’s bazaar last week. The dealers there are considered to be influential for the political mood in the country. But those in power in Tehran have developed a sophisticated system of staying in power over four decades.
A bomb exploded in the city of Shiraz on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people. The terrorist militia Islamic State claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack on social media. At first glance, the terrorist attack seems to have nothing to do with the uprising against the regime. But Iranian human rights activists warn of a possible development like that in Syria after the beginning of the peaceful civil protests. Bashar al-Assad’s regime itself encouraged the emergence of radical groups in order to win back the sympathies of the population.