Mahsa Amini’s death: Iran students, workers defy protest crackdown
Iranian protesters remained defiant yesterday with students staging sit-ins and some industrial workers going on strike despite a crackdown activists say has left dozens dead and hundreds more imprisoned.
Videos posted on social media indicated that protests flared at various points in the capital and other cities over recent days, with women burning headscarves and shouting slogans against the Islamic republic.
Kurdish rights group Hengaw accused the authorities of using heavy weaponry, including "shelling" on neighbourhoods and "machine gun fire", in the northwestern city of Sanandaj -- claims which could not be independently confirmed amid widespread internet blocks.
Gunshots were also heard in Amini's home town of Saqqez, said the Norway-based group.
The unrest erupted over three weeks ago over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian woman of Kurdish origin who died following her arrest by the notorious Tehran morality police who enforce the strict dress rules on women including compulsory headscarf.
Activists say she was beaten in custody, while the authorities in Iran have released a medical report blaming a pre-existing condition.
The protests have channelled anger among some Iranian women over the compulsory headscarf, but have also seen slogans shouted against the Islamic system created by late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the ousting of the shah in 1979.
The UK yesterday said it had slapped sanctions on Iran's "morality police" after the death in custody of Amini.
Oslo-based non-government group Iran Human Rights (IHR) shared images of a sit-in protest at the northern Gilan university and of high school girls in the northern town of Mahabad removing their headscarves.
It also posted a video which it said showed a large crowd of students outside Tehran polytechnic yesterday denouncing the "poverty and corruption" in Iran and shouting "death to this tyranny".
Footage shared on social media, including by news site Iran Wire, said students at Tehran women's university Al-Zahra shouted criticism of the regime during a visit Saturday by President Ebrahim Raisi.
Student at universities including Tehran Azad also painted their hands red to evoke the crackdown by the authorities on the protests, images showed.
State news agency IRNA said police used tear gas late Sunday "to disperse the crowds in dozens of locations in Tehran", adding that the demonstrators "chanted slogans and set fire to and damaged public property, including a police booth".
There have also been signs of labour unrest. Videos broadcast by Persian media based outside Iran showed striking workers burning tyres outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the country's southwest.
IHR said workers were blocking roads there, and there were also reports of strikes at refineries in Abadan in the west of Iran and Kengan in the south.
In an act of cyber defiance, the hacking group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) had posted an image during the main state TV evening news on Saturday of Khamenei in crosshairs and being consumed by flames.
The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini's death has claimed at least 95 lives according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.
Another 90 people were killed by the security forces in Iran's far southeastern city of Zahedan from September 30 after protests sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, said IHR, citing the UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.
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