New unrest hits Iran on crackdown anniversary
Protesters commemorate 2019 violence
Nationwide protests erupted again in Iran on Tuesday as demonstrators marked the third anniversary of a lethal crackdown on unrest sparked by a fuel price increase.
The call to commemorate those killed in the 2019 violence gave new momentum to the protests that followed the death in morality police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September.
From dawn on Tuesday shops were shuttered in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, and later the din of honking car horns reverberated as protesters blocked a major roundabout at Sanat Square, chanting, “Freedom, freedom.” Outside a Tehran metro station a large crowd shouted: “This year is the year of blood, Ali Khamenei will be toppled.”
People poured on to the streets of cities including Bandar Abbas and Shiraz, where women defiantly waved their headscarves in the air.
Rights groups said security forces “opened fire and shot tear gas at protesters” after dark on Nawbahar Boulevard Kermanshah, a Kurdish city in western Iran.
Workers downed tools and university students boycotted classes in Amini’s home province of Kurdistan in western Iran. In the province’s flashpoint city of Sanandaj, protesters burned tires in a street and chanted anti-government slogans. Male and female students at Islamic Azad University in the northwestern city of Tabriz shouted, “Woman, life, freedom” and “Man, homeland, prosperity.”
The UN Human Rights Office called on Iran to immediately release thousands of people arrested for taking part in peaceful demonstrations.
“Instead of opening space for dialogue on legitimate grievances, the authorities are responding to unprecedented protests with increasing harshness,” spokesman Jeremy Laurence said.
The protests on Tuesday marked the third anniversary of the start of “Bloody Aban,” or Bloody November, when a surprise overnight fuel price increase sparked street violence that lasted for days.
Amnesty International said at least 304 people were killed, but a tribunal in London this year by various rights groups said expert evidence suggested the toll was probably far
more, possibly as high as 1,515.
On Tuesday, students at K. N. Toosi University of Technology in Tehran chanted “1,500 people were killed in Aban.”
Support for the new protests is pouring in from lawyers, students, doctors, actors and athletes seeking a new political order. Retired football star Ali Daei said he had refused an invitation to attend the World Cup in Qatar.
“In these difficult days when most of us are unwell, I have given a negative response to FIFA’s invitation and prefer to stay alongside my compatriots and share my condolences to families who have recently lost their loved ones,” Daei said.