Protesters are expected to take to the streets again on Saturday over Mahsa Amini, despite internet cuts, as the protest movement sparked by outrage over her death in custody enters its fifth week.
Amini’s death on September 16, three days after her arrest by Iran’s notorious vice squad, has fueled the biggest wave of street protests and violence in the country in years.
Young women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, shouting anti-government slogans, removing and burning their headscarves and confronting the security forces in the streets.
Online monitor NetBlocks reported a “new major disruption to internet traffic in #Iran” around 10:00 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Saturday.
Despite blocked access to the internet, including platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, activists called for a large turnout in protests online on Saturday under the slogan “The beginning of the end!”
They have called on people across Iran to turn up in places where the security forces are not present and chant “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“We must be present on the pitches because the best VPN these days is the street,” they explained, referring to virtual private networks used to circumvent internet restrictions.
In response to the call for fresh protests, one of Iran’s main revolutionary bodies, the Islamic Development Coordination Council, has urged people to “express revolutionary anger against seditioners and rioters.”
A call was also made this week for “retirees” from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to gather on Saturday in light of “the current delicate situation,” according to a journalist from the Shargh newspaper.
– “Brave Women of Iran” –
The women-led protests have won the support of the US President.
“I want you to know that we stand by the citizens, the brave women of Iran,” Joe Biden said late Friday.
“It stunned me what it woke up in Iran. It’s awakened something that I don’t think will be silenced for a long, long time,” he said.
“Women all over the world are persecuted in different ways, but for God’s sake they should be able to wear whatever they want.”
Iran “must end violence against its own citizens simply by exercising their basic rights,” he added.
At least 108 people were killed in the Amini protests, and at least 93 others died in separate clashes in Zahedan, capital of southeastern Sistan-Balochistan province, according to Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.
The unrest continued, although Amnesty International called a “relentlessly brutal crackdown” that included a “widespread attack on child protesters” – resulting in the deaths of at least 23 minors.
The crackdown has drawn international condemnation and sanctions against Iran from Britain, Canada and the United States.
Iran’s supreme leader has accused the country’s enemies, including the United States and Israel, of fomenting the “riots”.
– “Great moment in history” –
His Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has called for the European Union to take a “realistic approach” to the Amini protests as the bloc prepares to impose fresh sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
“Who would believe that the death of a girl is so important to westerners?” he said in a statement on Friday.
“If so, what have they done in the face of hundreds of thousands of martyrs and dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon?” he added.
EU countries this week agreed to impose new sanctions and the move is expected to be approved at the bloc’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
In response to the protests, the clerical state’s security forces have also launched a campaign to mass arrest artists, dissidents, journalists and sports stars.
An Iranian filmmaker said authorities prevented him from traveling to the London Film Festival because of his support for the protests.
The British Film Institute said Mani Haghighi was due to attend the festival for his latest film, Subtraction, but Iranian authorities “confiscated his passport.”
“Let me tell you that being here in Tehran now is one of the greatest joys of my life,” Haghighi said.
“I cannot put into words the joy and honor of witnessing this great moment in history firsthand.
“Well, if that’s punishment for what I did, then by all means do it.”
