Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike on Saturday despite an escalation of crackdowns, according to social media reports, as demonstrations that flared up over Mahsa Amini’s death entered an eighth week.
The clerical state was gripped by protests that erupted when 22-year-old Amini died in custody after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.
As the work week began, security forces on Saturday took new measures to halt protests at universities in the capital Tehran, searching students and forcing them to remove face masks, activists said.
In a video released by BBC Persian, students at Azad Islamic University in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, were seen demonstrating and chanting, “I am a free woman, you are the pervert.”
“A student dies but does not accept humiliation,” students at Gilan University in the northern city of Rasht chanted in footage posted online by an activist. AFP could not immediately verify the videos.
In the northwestern city of Qazvin, dozens of similar slogans were heard chanting at a mourning ceremony 40 days after the death of protester Javad Heydari.
Norway-based Hengaw rights group said people were watching a “widespread strike” in Amini’s hometown of Saqez in Kurdistan province, which has seen shops shut down.
“Our weapon is our unity, our weapon is our anger, our weapon is our resistance…You cannot go against the will of the people,” tweeted Hassan Ronaghi, brother of prominent rights activist Hossein.
– ‘Massacre’ –
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said Wednesday that at least 176 people were killed by security forces in the crackdown on the protests.
Another 101 people have died in separate protests since September 30 in Sistan-Balochistan, a mainly Sunni Muslim province in the south-east of the country.
An official in Kerman province admitted authorities were struggling to quell protests that erupted after Amini’s death on September 16.
“Internet restrictions, arrests of riot leaders and the state’s presence in the streets have always eliminated riots, but these types of riots and their audiences are different,” said Rahman Jalali, the provincial political and security officer he was appointed by ISNA news agency quoted.
Up to 10 people, including children, were killed by security forces in the town of Khash on Friday in a flare-up in Sistan-Balochistan, Amnesty International said.
Molavi Abdol Hamid, the cleric who leads Friday prayers in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Balochistan, issued a statement condemning the incident in Khash as a “massacre,” in which he said 16 people were killed.
Video verified by AFP shows youths running for cover and screaming as gunshots are heard on a street in Khash.
Ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi on Friday rejected a promise by his US counterpart Joe Biden to “liberate Iran”.
Biden had said during the campaign for the midterm elections: “Don’t worry, we will liberate Iran. They will free themselves pretty soon.”
– US downplays Biden’s remarks –
Raisi replied that Iran had already been liberated in 1979 when the Western-backed Shah was overthrown.
“Our young men and young women are determined, and we will never allow them to carry out your satanic desires,” he said at a rally commemorating the November 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran by radical students.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby downplayed the American leader’s remarks on Friday.
“The President expressed our solidarity with the protesters, as he honestly has from the beginning,” Kirby told reporters.
When asked if the Biden administration thought the Iranian regime might fall soon, he said, “I don’t think we have any such evidence.”
On Friday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform Binance acknowledged that funds owned or destined for Iranians had flowed through its service and may have run afoul of US sanctions.
“Earlier this week, we discovered that Binance was interacting with “bad actors” through Iranian cryptocurrency exchanges,” said Chagri Poyraz, head of sanctions at Binance.
Some of these users “were trying to move crypto through Binance’s exchange,” he wrote in a blog on the company’s website. “As soon as we discovered this, we proceeded to freeze transfers (and) suspend accounts.”
Currently, no Iranian cryptocurrency platforms are under sanctions. But the restrictions imposed by the US prohibit a US company or US citizen from selling goods and services to Iranian residents, companies or institutions. The ban includes financial services.
