TEHRAN (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman whom the morality police arrested, has sparked protests across Iran, and a rights group said on Wednesday that two more protesters had died overnight, bringing the total to six.
The death of Amini, a 22 years old woman who had been detained for reportedly donning a hijab headscarf in an “improper” manner, has sparked outrage in the public since Iranian officials announced her passing on Friday.
Activists claimed that the woman, whose Kurdish name is Jhina, had taken a deadly hit to the head; Iranian authorities denied this claim and announced that they had opened an investigation.
Video footage that went viral on social media has shown some female protesters bravely removing their hijabs and burning them in bonfires or symbolically cutting their hair.
In a fifth night of street protests that had extended to 15 cities, state media claimed on Wednesday that police deployed tear gas and detained people to disperse crowds of about 1,000 people.
The official IRNA news agency reported that the protesters stoned security personnel, set fire to police cars and trash cans, and screamed anti-government slogans.
The Rights group Article 19 expressed its great worry over reports of the Iranian security forces’ unauthorised use of force, particularly the use of live ammunition.
IRNA reported that rallies took place overnight in Tehran as well as in Mashhad, Tabriz, Rasht, Isfahan, and Shiraz, which are all located in different parts of the country.
Despite internet restrictions noted by Internet access monitor Netblocks, demonstrators could be heard yelling in video footage that reached beyond Iran, “Death to the dictator” and “Woman, life, freedom.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, spoke aloud on Wednesday without addressing the nation’s escalating turmoil, and the country’s ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi was scheduled to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York later the day.
Amini lived in the province of Kurdistan where the protests first began. Its governor Ismail Zarei Koosha declared on Tuesday that three people had died as a result of the protests.
According to the Fars news agency, he asserted that they were “killed suspiciously” as a part of “a plot by the enemy.”
Two more demonstrators were killed overnight, the Norway-based Kurdish human rights group Hengaw said and was the first to disclose the three killings.
Hengaw said that the two, who were 16 and 23, died in the West Azerbaijan province cities of Urmia and Piranshahr, both of which saw extremely violent fights.
According to the report, another male protester who was hurt in Divandareh on September 17 suffered injuries and died in the hospital.
A video that quickly went viral online shows the security forces firing on protestors in the southern city of Shiraz. Protests stayed there until the early hours of the morning.
The United Nations, the United States, France, along with other countries have condemned Amini’s killing and how Iran responded to the protests.
Since unrest over fuel price hike in November 2019, the protests in Iran have been among the most severe.
Tuesday, Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, denounced what he called foreign interventionist stances.
It was regrettable that some nations attempted to use an incident that was currently under investigation as an opening to advance their political objectives and aspirations against the Iranian government and people, he said.
ISNA news agency reported that Issa Zarepour, Iran’s minister of telecommunications, issued a warning on Internet restrictions on Wednesday, citing current security challenges.
With reference to how in 2019, authorities had “used the darkness of a shutdown to kill, maim, and jail demonstrators and bystanders with impunity,” Article 19 stated that it was “alarmed by the local Internet shutdowns.”