Clerics get lost: Iran protesters rage on
Videos show police firing live rounds to disperse protesters Tehran govt denies cover-up over downing of Ukrainian jet Trump to Iran: Don’t kill your protesters, world is watching Iranians must be allowed to protest freely, says Germany
tehran — Protesters denouncing Iran’s clerical rulers took to the streets and riot police deployed to face them on Monday, in a third day of demonstrations after authorities acknowledged shooting down a passenger plane by accident.
Video from inside Iran showed students on Monday chanting slogans including “Clerics get lost!” outside universities in the city of Isfahan and in Tehran, where riot police were filmed taking out positions on the streets.
Scores, possibly hundreds, of protesters were videoed at sites in Tehran and Isfahan, a major city south of the capital.
“They killed our elites and replaced them with clerics,” they chanted outside a Tehran university, referring to Iranian students returning to studies in Canada who were on the plane. —
Actually, I couldn’t care less if they (Iranians) negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons.”
Donald Trump, US President
Any military confrontation… will have an impact not only on peace and stability in the region but the peace and stability of the whole world.”
Iranian security forces fired both live ammunition and tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the Islamic Republic’s initial denial that it shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, online videos purported to show on Monday. Protesters took to the streets for a third day on Monday, expressing outrage over the authorities’ admission that they had shot down a passenger plane by accident during a confrontation with the United States.
Videos sent to the New York-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran show a crowd of demonstrators near Azadi, or Freedom, Square fleeing as a tear gas canister landed among them. People cough and sputter while trying to escape the fumes, with one woman calling out in Farsi: “They fired tear gas at people! Azadi Square. Death to the dictator!”
Another video shows a woman being carried away in the aftermath as a blood trail can be seen on the ground. Those around her cry out that she has been shot by live ammunition in the leg.
“Oh my God, she’s bleeding nonstop!” one person shouts. Another shouts: “Bandage it!”
Photos and video after the incident show pools of blood on the sidewalk.
Tehran’s police chief, Gen. Hossein Rahimi, later denied his officers opened fire though the semiofficial Fars news agency said police “shot tear gas in some areas.”
“Police treated people who had gathered with patience and tolerance,” Iranian media quoted Rahimi as saying. “Police did not shoot in the gatherings since broad-mindedness and restraint has been agenda of the police forces of the capital.”
Other videos from Fars showed demonstrators chanting: “We are children of war. Fight with us, we will fight back.”
Ebrahim Raisi, the head of Iran’s judiciary, warned protesters and alleged, without providing evidence, that “the agents of America and agents of foreign countries” wanted to use anger over the plane shootdown to “compromise” Iran’s security.
Authorities denied that police had opened fire, while US President Donald Trump tweeted: “don’t kill your protesters.”
Trump wrote on Twitter late on Sunday that National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien had “suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran ‘choked off ’, will force them to negotiate.”
“Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and ‘don’t kill your protesters’,” he wrote, repeating his earlier tweets making similar calls to the Iranian authorities not to open fire.
Iran’s government spokesman dismissed Trump’s comments, saying Iranians were suffering because of his actions and they would remember that he had ordered the killing in a drone strike of Qassem Soleimani, the general whose death on January 3 prompted huge morning ceremonies in Iran over several days.
The crash of the Ukraine International Airline early on Wednesday killed all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians. After pointing to a technical failure and insisting for three days that the Iranian armed forces were not to blame, authorities on Saturday admitted accidentally shooting it down in the face of mounting evidence and accusations by Western leaders.
Iran downed the flight as it braced for possible American retaliation after firing ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq housing U.S. forces earlier on Wednesday. The missile attack, which caused no casualties, was a response to the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, in a US airstrike in Baghdad. But no retaliation came.
Canada held vigils. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told one event: “We will not rest until there are answers.”
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said it had obtained visas for two of its investigators to travel to Iran.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has warned that military confrontation with Iran will impact global peace and stability, as he visits the Middle East hoping to ease tensions spiked by the US killing of a top Iranian general.
His comments came at the start of a five-day Gulf tour that had been thrown into doubt after Tehran responded to the attack on Qasem Soleimani by launching a barrage of missiles at bases hosting American troops in Iraq, prompting fears of all-out war.
“Any military confrontation in the region that includes a country like Iran will have an impact not only on peace and stability in the region but the peace and stability of the whole world,” Abe said, according to Ohtaka. —
Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister