Iran targets celebrities, journalists over protests
Iran stepped up pressure on celebrities and journalists on Thursday over the wave of womenled protests sparked by outrage over the death of Mahsa Amini ater she was arrested by the Islamic republic’s morality police.
Filmmakers, athletes, musicians and actors have backed the demonstrations, and many saw it as a signal when the national football team remained in their black tracksuits when the anthems were played before a match in Vienna against Senegal.
“We will take action against the celebrities who have fanned the flames of the riots,” Tehran provincial governor Mohsen Mansouri said, according to the ISNA news agency.
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei similarly charged that “those who became famous thanks to support from the system have joined the enemy when times are difficult.” Public anger flared ater Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died on Sept.16, three days ater her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict rules for women on wearing hijab headscarves and modest clothing.
Amnesty slams ‘unlawful use of force and ruthless violence by security forces,’ adds ‘dozens of people, including children, have been killed so far and hundreds injured’
Iran on Thursday slammed “interference” in its internal affairs by France over a statement in support of the protests, having earlier complained to Britain and Norway.
Solidarity protests with Iranian women have been held worldwide, and rallies are planned in 70 cities on Saturday.
One protest erupted in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, where women rallied outside Iran’s embassy.
Iran on Thursday arrested the reporter Elahe Mohammadi, who had covered Amini’s funeral, her lawyer said, the latest of a growing number of journalists to be detained.
Police have also arrested journalist Niloufar Hamedi of the reformist Shargh daily, who went to the hospital where Amini lay in a coma and helped expose the case to the world.
Intelligence officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrested 50 members of “an organised network” behind the “riots” in the holy Shiite city of Qom, the Guards said according to Fars news agency.
London-based Amnesty International criticised
Iran’s “widespread paterns of unlawful use of force and ruthless violence by security forces.” It said this included the use of live ammunition and metal pellets, heavy beatings and sexual violence against women, all “under the cover of deliberate ongoing internet and mobile disruptions.” “Dozens of people, including children, have been killed so far and hundreds injured,” said the group’s secretary general Agnes Callamard.
Fars news agency has said “around 60” people had been killed, while Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights has reported a death toll of at least 76 people.
On Thursday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was “doing everything” she could to push for European Union sanctions against those “beating women to death and shooting demonstrators in the name of religion.” The Iranian government has sought to play down the crisis.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-abdollahian said he told Western diplomats at recent UN meetings that the protests were “not a big deal” for the stability of the clerical state.
“There is not going to be regime change in Iran,” he told National Public Radio in New York on Wednesday. “Don’t play to the emotions of the Iranian people.” Meanwhile, Iraq summoned the Iranian ambassador on Thursday to deliver a diplomatic complaint following a deadly drone bombing campaign, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Iranian drones targeted an Iraniankurdish opposition group in northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and wounding 32 others.
Iran’s atacks targeted positions of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan in the town of Koya, some 65km east of Arbil, the main city and capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
The group, known by the acronym KDPI, is a letist armed opposition force banned in Iran.
Turkey’s defense minister said Turkish military jets carried out a new aerial offensive against suspected hideouts of Kurdish separatists from Turkey in northern Iraq, striking as deep as 14km deep into Iraqi territory.