Iranians stage new protest actions over Amini’s death

GBNEWS24DESK//

Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike yesterday despite a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini’s death entered an eighth week.

The clerical state has been gripped by protests that erupted when Amini, 22, died in custody after her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women.

As the working week got underway, security forces adopted new measures to halt protests at universities in the capital Tehran yesterday, searching students and forcing them to remove facemasks, activists said.

But students were seen demonstrating and chanting “I am a free woman, you are the pervert” at Islamic Azad University of Mashhad, in northeast Iran, in a video published by BBC Persian.

“A student dies, but doesn’t accept humiliation,” sang students at Gilan University in the northern city of Rasht, in footage posted online by an activist. AFP was unable to immediately verify the videos.

In the northwestern city of Qazvin, dozens were heard chanting similar slogans at a mourning ceremony 40 days after the death of protester Javad Heydari.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said people were observing a “widespread strike” in Amini’s home town of Saqez, in Kurdistan province, where shops were shuttered.

“Our weapon is our unity, our weapon is our rage, our weapon is our resistance… You cannot stand against the will of people,” tweeted Hassan Ronaghi, the brother of prominent rights campaigner Hossein.

Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said Wednesday that at least 176 people have been killed by the security forces in the protest crackdown.

It said another 101 people had lost their lives in separate protests since September 30 in Sistan-Baluchistan, a mainly Sunni Muslim province in the southeast of the country.

An official in Kerman province admitted the authorities were having trouble quelling the protests that first broke out after Amini’s death on September 16.