A 15-year-old Iranian girl died last week after being beaten by security forces during a raid on her school, according to a teachers’ union which called on authorities to stop killing protesters ” innocent”.
Asra Panahi died on October 13 after “plainclothes police attacked” her school, Shahed High School, in Ardabil, a city in northwestern Iran, the Coordinating Council of Trade Unions in Iran said. teachers.
Students beaten
The students were out for an “ideological event” organized in a place known to host demonstrations since the death of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died on September 16, three days after she was arrested by vice police in Tehran for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code for women.
Some of the students who “shouted slogans against discrimination and inequality” were “victims of violence and insults by veiled and plainclothes women”, according to a statement from the union published on Monday. Back at school, the students were beaten again, the text continues.
A masked death?
“One of the students, Asra Panahi, unfortunately died in hospital, while others were arrested,” the teachers said, adding that the beatings plunged another student into a coma. State television broadcast a video of the young Asra’s uncle in which the latter assures that the teenager died of cardiac arrest.
Quoted by the Didban Iran site, Kazem Mousavi, deputy of Ardabil, for his part declared that she had “committed suicide by swallowing tablets”. These statements drew the ire of former footballer Ali Daei, from Ardabil, who has previously had problems with the authorities for supporting the protests. On his Instagram account, followed by 10 million subscribers, Ali Daei said he did not believe in the theories of cardiac arrest or suicide, calling them “rumors”.
The judicial authority denies
“If Ali Daei has evidence of what he says about the death of the Ardabil schoolgirl, he should present it to the officials concerned as soon as possible”, reacted Mizan Online, the site of the Iranian Judicial Authority. , calling the footballer’s remarks “fake news”.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, teachers criticized the school’s decision to take students to an “ideological event” without parental consent. “We call on the authorities to put an end to the killing of innocent people and defenseless protesters,” they write.
At least 23 children have been killed in the crackdown on protests by Iranian security forces, according to Amnesty International.