Volatile Iran city sees new protests
Demonstrations on Friday leave area battered
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A southeastern city in Iran that was the scene of a bloody crackdown last month awoke to new destruction on Saturday, state TV showed, after tensions erupted the day before.
Meanwhile, witnesses said antigovernment protests erupted at several universities in Tehran amid heavy security on Saturday, the latest unrest in the nationwide movement first sparked by the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the custody of the country’s morality police.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Germany’s capital to show solidarity with the protesters in Iran. Berlin police estimated that 37,000 people had joined the German demonstration by late afternoon.
Although the protests across Iran first focused on the country’s mandatory hijab, they have transformed into the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since the 2009 Green Movement over disputed elections. Security forces have dispersed gatherings with live ammunition and tear gas, leaving more than 200 people dead, according to rights groups.
In Zahedan, a southeastern city with an ethnic Baluch population, protests after Friday prayers left the city battered. Shops gaped open to the street, their windows smashed. Sidewalks were littered with broken glass. ATMs were damaged. Cleaning crews came out, sweeping debris from vandalized stores.
Iran’s deputy interior minister for security, Majid Mirahmadi, told the state-run IRNA news agency the unrest in Zahedan had subsided on Saturday.
Violence first broke out in the restive city of Zahedan on Sept. 30 — a day that activists describe as the deadliest since the nationwide protests began. Outrage spread after allegations that a Baluch teenager had been raped by a police officer, fueling deep tensions in the underdeveloped region home to minority Sunni Muslims in the Shiite theocracy.
Rights groups say dozens of people were killed in what residents refer to as “Bloody Friday,” as security forces opened fire on the crowds. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights puts the death toll at more than 90. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.
More unrest loomed across the country five weeks after the protests first erupted. Security was exceptionally tight on the streets of Tehran on Saturday. Riot police and members of the Basij militia, armed with batons, were out in force near Tehran University and at major intersections in the capital.
A teachers’ union in Iran called for a nationwide strike on Sunday and Monday in protest over the deaths and detention of students in the country, according to the association’s statement on Telegram.
Iranian officials have repeatedly blamed the protests on foreign interference, without offering evidence. On Saturday, Iran’s deputy judiciary chief, Kazem Gharibabadi, vowed Iran would file a case in Tehran against the United States government and London-based Farsi language media outlets over their alleged role in fomenting unrest.
It’s unlikely such a lawsuit, like a raft of previous Iranian cases against the United States over years of enmity, would gain traction; there are no American assets to confiscate in the Islamic Republic.