Despite authorities blocking access to popular apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp, activists launched an online call for mass protests on Saturday under the slogan ‘The beginning of the end!’ of the regime, when the mobilization entered its fifth week despite a deadly crackdown.
They encouraged young people and the Iranian population to demonstrate in places where the security forces are not present and to chant “Death to the dictator”, in reference to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The demonstrators received the support of Joe Biden on Friday evening, who assured that the United States was “with the citizens, with the courageous women of Iran”. “I was flabbergasted at what it woke up in Iran. It woke up something that I don’t think will go away for a long, long time,” the US president said in California.
Women “must be able to wear what they want to wear, good God”, launched Joe Biden, adding: “Iran must end the violence against its own citizens who are simply exercising their basic rights”.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has repeatedly accused the United States, Tehran’s sworn enemy, of seeking to destabilize his country. The Islamic Republic also accused France of “interference”, after French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks on Wednesday saying that Paris “condemns the repression carried out today by the Iranian regime”.
The protest movement has prompted solidarity rallies abroad as well as Western sanctions targeting Iranian officials and institutions accused of involvement in the crackdown.
Saturday, parallel to the protest movement, “anti-riot” rallies are planned in the evening in “all the mosques of the country (…) to counter the plots of the enemies of Iran”, according to a press release from the Islamic Council of development coordination, responsible for organizing official events.
– Multifaceted nature of the demonstrations –
Outrage over the September 16 death of the 22-year-old Iranian Kurd has sparked the biggest wave of protests in Iran since the 2019 protests over rising gas prices in the oil-rich country.
Mahsa Amini was arrested on September 13 by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women, including the wearing of the veil.
Iranian authorities say the young woman died of an illness and not of “beatings”, according to a medical report rejected by her father. Her cousin claimed she died after “a violent blow to the head”.
Since then, young women, students and schoolgirls have spearheaded protests in which they chant anti-government slogans, set their headscarves on fire and clash with security forces.
At least 108 people have been killed since September 16, according to the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) association. For its part, Amnesty deplored the death of at least 23 children “killed by Iranian security forces”, adding that they were between 11 and 17 years old.
Two members of the security forces were shot and killed in the southern province of Fars as part of the protests, bringing to at least 20 the number of members of the security forces killed since the start of the dispute, local authorities reported on Friday. official media.
Analysts say the multifaceted nature of anti-government protests, including young people who gather in small groups in certain neighborhoods to avoid detection, makes it difficult for law enforcement to try to stop them.
In an open letter published on its front page on Thursday, the reformist newspaper Etemad called on Iran’s top security official to put an end to arrests carried out under “sometimes fallacious pretexts”.
Rarely, the Tehran police announced on Friday that they would investigate accusations of harassment against one of their agents. The latter was filmed when he seemed to be touching a protester who had just been arrested, according to a video published by channels abroad.
In recent days, deadly clashes between demonstrators and security forces have taken place in particular in Sanandaj, capital of the province of Kurdistan where Mahsa Amini was from.
