Filenews 23 October 2022
Traders and workers in several Iranian cities participated in strikes on Saturday, as part of the mass protests that erupted more than a month ago on the occasion of the death of young Iranian-born Kurdish-born Mahsa Amini, following her arrest by the morals police, NGOs said.
Mahsa Amini, 22, died three days after being arrested in Tehran by the morals police, who accused her of not covering her hair completely, thus violating the strict dress code for women in the Islamic Republic.
The crackdown on mass protests, the most massive in Iran since those in 2019 against rising fuel prices, has claimed the lives of at least 122 people, including children, according to Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR).
Thousands of Iranian women, many with their heads uncovered, are at the forefront of the protest movement, shouting slogans against the clerical regime, without hesitating to take on the security forces.
New protests were organised yesterday, but any attempt to assess their extent is difficult due to the restrictions on internet access imposed by the authorities. They were accompanied by strikes.
The news website 1500tasvir spoke of "strikes" organized in many cities, such as "Sanadadj, Bukan and Sakez" (north). The latter is the city where Mahsa Amini was born.
The human rights advocacy organization Hengaw, based in Norway, also spoke of traders who went on strike in the same cities and in Marivan (west).
In Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan province, dozens of workers gathered in front of a chocolate factory, according to a video that AFP notes it could not verify immediately.
Students protested at several universities in the country, according to 1500tasvir, which referred to the faculty of Fine Arts and Architecture in Yazd (central), Tehran University, Alame Tabatabay University, east of the capital, Razi University in Kermanshah (northwest) and other higher education institutions in Khamedan (west), Ahvaz and Yasuj (southwest).
Dozens of students cheered and sang during a protest at a Tehran university, shows video uploaded to Twitter by 1500tasvir.
Another video, taken at the medical sciences school in Tabriz, shows dozens of students shouting slogans against the authorities.
A teachers' union has called for a national strike today and tomorrow Monday in protest of the crackdown that, according to Amnesty International, has claimed the lives of at least 23 children.
In a statement, the Teachers' Union Coordinating Council said it was calling for a "sit-in" in response to the "systematic repression" of security forces inside schools. He named four children who were killed and spoke of the arrest of a large number of faculty members.
Activists accuse the Iranian authorities of conducting a campaign of mass arrests and equally massive travel bans, including on athletes, journalists, lawyers, celebrities.
The authorities, who speak of "riots", not demonstrations, downplay their scope and attribute them to inciting "enemies" of the Islamic Republic, especially the US.
On Saturday, Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi admitted that protest rallies are taking place inside universities, but assured that there are "fewer and fewer participants". "The riots are in their last days," he added, according to the official Iranian news agency IRNA.
On Friday, Iranian athlete Elnaz Rekabi, who according to the BBC's Persian service and London-based organization Iran International was placed under house arrest after returning from South Korea, thanked those who support her via Instagram.
The 33-year-old athlete who participated in the Asian climbing championships was welcomed at tehran airport by a crowd of supporters. Her participation in the games without a headscarf, simply in a bandana and jumpsuit in the colors of Iran, was perceived as a gesture of solidarity with the demonstrations in her homeland.
Human rights groups based abroad expressed concern about the fate of the athlete, who after her return told the media that the headscarf was accidentally dropped on her and apologized.
Rallies in solidarity with participants in the protests in Iran continued abroad, from Tokyo to Berlin, with thousands of people present.
The international community condemns the crackdown and several countries, like the European Union, have imposed sanctions on Iranian leaders and state institutions they blame for it.
On Saturday, the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hussein Amirabdollahian, accused Washington of instrumentalizing the protests to secure concessions in negotiations that began a year ago in order to return all parties to full compliance with the agreement on the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy programme, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015.
CNA/RES
