Tear gas is in the air, shots can be heard and a helicopter is circling above the demonstrators’ heads: near the capital Tehran, protests against the authoritarian government course have again turned violent. “We were present at several protests, but this is in a different league,” reports an eyewitness in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran.
The images, shared on social media again on Thursday, show injured protesters and police officers. Crowds of people flock to the streets – mostly women. Eyewitnesses report that shouts can be heard again and again: “We fight, we die, we endure no humiliation”
Security forces are said to have shot at the demonstrators. Some fought back. “Somehow no one was afraid,” says another man on the fringes of the protests. “People’s eyes were filled with hate, there was no room for fear.”
The occasion was the end of the mourning period after the death of a young woman
The specific reason for Thursday’s demonstrations is the end of the 40-day mourning period following the death of young Iranian woman Hadis Najafi, who was reportedly shot dead by security forces during protests in Karaj in September. The authorities deny this. Najafi is now one of the symbolic figures of the demonstrators, who have not let up for six weeks.
The latest protest movement was triggered by the death of another young woman, the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini. The vice squad arrested her in mid-September for allegedly violating Islamic dress codes. She was held in police custody for several days, was released and died in hospital a few days later. Since then, tens of thousands have taken to the streets against the Islamic Republic’s repressive policies. According to human rights activists, more than 280 people have been killed since then and more than 14,000 arrested.
Many opponents of the regime use the traditional Islamic period of mourning to take to the streets regularly. “When you see the family suffering over the death of their daughter, you get angry,” said a young man involved in the protests.
A cleric is said to have been attacked and injured
But there are also social reasons for rebelling against the regime. “Karaj is a center of the protests because many middle-class people live here, but they are increasingly falling into the lower classes,” says one of those taking to the streets. Iranian media also reported that a police post was said to have been set on fire. Other images shared on social media showed people stealing guns from an abandoned police car.
A suspected attack on a clergyman also caused a stir. The news agency Tasnim reported that a cleric was attacked and wounded during the protests. A picture on social media is said to show the injured cleric in the back seat of a car. The reports cannot be independently verified at this time. In Sahedan, a city in the south-east of the country where protests have already left many demonstrators dead, state media on Thursday also reported another, this time fatal, attack on a Shiite preacher. Iran’s mullahs have been criticized for weeks as a symbol of the authoritarian leadership in the Shiite state.