On July 8, four men armed with grenades and automatic weapons burst into police station number 16 in the city of Zāhedān, capital of the Iranian region of Sistan-and-Baluchistan, and killed two police officers. The assailants also die instantly. The extremist organization Jaish ul-Adl claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement that the targeting of this place was not trivial. The police station symbolizes, according to Jaish ul-Adl, the Iranian regime’s violence and impunity towards the people.
The group refers to the tragic “Black Friday”, a massacre that took place in the city on September 30, 2022, two weeks after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, was killed by morality police in Tehran. The country was then in turmoil, with major demonstrations – strongly repressed – enamelling several Iranian cities.
On the day of “Black Friday”, in a sermon that has remained famous, the imam of the great mosque of Zāhedān denounces the immunity which a police officer in the province would benefit from, accused of having raped and tortured a 15-year-old Baluch girl . After the prayer, some of the faithful went to police station 16 of the city, chanting slogans against the regime and asking that the officer be punished. The soldiers fire on the crowd, killing at least 98 people.
The violence of this massacre, like the massive repression in the rest of the country, did not calm opposition to the Tehran regime in this marginalized province, marked by poverty and unemployment. Sistan-and-Baluchistan is even, today, the last region where the people still dare to challenge power in the streets. In Zāhedān, Friday sermons have become political rallies, weekly meetings where the authorities are criticized. They are followed by protests, regularly suppressed in blood.
“During these demonstrations, processions of women quickly appeared, a very unusual fact in Sistan-Baluchistan,” notes Stéphane Dudoignon, CNRS researcher and connoisseur of the region. The city is mainly populated by the Baluchis, a discriminated minority, but also very conservative. In addition to street massacres, there are public executions. According to the NGO Iran Human Rights, Sistan and Balochistan is the province where the Iranian authorities carry out the most executions: 109 in 2022, or almost 20% of all those recorded in Iran.
The man who gives the Friday sermon and stirs up the resolve of anti-regime worshipers is an atypical figure on the Iranian political spectrum. Molavi Abdolhamid is the leader of Sunni Muslims in Iran, to whom the Baluchis claim to belong. In his speeches, he denounces the discrimination suffered by women and religious minorities (including the Sunnis) in this country where Shiism has been the state religion since the 16th century, criticizes the repression, the execution of demonstrators and even the instrumentalization of religion by the Iranian regime.
Imam of the great mosque of Zāhedān, he has been since his “Black Friday” speech one of the main figures to dare to criticize the repression of the regime… Although “he has never opposed the existence of Islamic Republic, and moreover explicitly advocated, even after the death of Mahsa Amini, the compulsory wearing of the veil, although he has spoken less about it since last winter,” recalls Stéphane Dudoignon. Confidential documents, made public by a hack of the Black Reward hacker group, reveal that Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, fears that officially attacking the imam “will again anger Sunnis and cause them to descend into the street “.
But three weeks ago, according to the independent Baloch media Haal Vsh, the imam escaped an assassination attempt, the sponsor of which would be in direct contact with the Iranian army. Tensions have been escalating ever since. Molavi Abdolamid has been denied the right of pilgrimage to Mecca, his grandson has been arrested, and the state media constantly attacks him. From now on in Zāhedān, each speech of the imam can ignite the city, even the region.
