Iranians Continue Protests Wednesday After Nightfall
Iranians once again braved the violent crackdown by the Islamic Republic and poured into streets Wednesday evening, amid threats of death sentences for protesters.
Iranians once again braved the violent crackdown by the Islamic Republic and poured into streets Wednesday evening, amid threats of death sentences for protesters.
In the central city of Isfahan, angry protesters held rallies near Chaharbagh neighborhood while city officials had cut the electricity in several districts.
People in Tabriz took to streets and in Mashhad, northeast, demonstrators set fire at billboards to show anger at government brutality.
Youths in Bukan in West Azarbaijan province blocked the transit road to Tabriz by lighting fires. In the Kurdish city of Marivan demonstrators were chanting that they will not stop their fight against the authoritarian rule.
Videos show that protesters used a mosque loudspeaker to invite their fellow citizens to join them in their movement.
In the city of Mahabad in West Azarbaijan some overnight protests were staged with people lighting fires and blocking streets.
People in Shiraz published some fliers to call for a protest rally on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, a huge crowd of people attended a mourning procession of a young woman who was killed by security forces forty days ago in the northern city of Nowshahr.
Reports say many people travelled from several other cities to commemorate Hannaneh Kia. They chanted “Death to Khamenei,” and “Death to Dictator.” Videos on social media show that regime forces fired tear gas near the house of the victim.
Videos on social media show people in Qazvin took to streets after nightfall. In capital Tehran women chanted antigovernment slogans on the subway and residents in Ekbatan district repeated their nightly vigil and chanted antigovernment slogans from their windows despite attacks by plainclothes who fired at buildings during the past few nights.
Some other videos show use of violence against peaceful demonstrators in Chitgar neighborhood in western capital.
On Wednesday afternoon, doctors, residents, and medical students of Tehran’s Khomeini Hospital also gathered in front of the Tehran Medical Council chanting slogans in support of the uprising and protested the brutal treatment of medical staff.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) in a statement on Wednesday urged the international community to warn the Iranian authorities against issuing death sentences against detained protesters.
“Issuing death sentences against the protesters—after the Iranian authorities have unlawfully arrested tens of thousands of peaceful protesters and killed hundreds through the indiscriminate use of lethal force to squash the protests—is a blatant attempt to terrorize the Iranian people into silence; it will cement the Islamic Republic’s status as an outlaw state that has no regard for law or life,” said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI executive director.
In a meeting Monday, Tehran Province Prosecutor Ali Alghasi Mehr said some 1,000 indictments had been issued in connection with recent “riots”.
In the same meeting, Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Eje’i said, “Those who intend to confront and subvert the regime are dependent on foreigners and will be punished according to legal standards,”suggesting that some protesters would be charged with collaborating with foreign governments.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly made claims that “foreign enemies” have provoked the unrest without any evidence.
On Sunday, the Iranian regime charged six people in Tehran with “waging war,” “corruption on earth,” “assembly and collusion against national security” and “confronting the Islamic Republic” for participating in the protests.
“Waging war” and “corruption on earth” are charges that can lead to a death sentence.
“Death sentences against people for exercising their right to freedom of expression, after the killings of peaceful protesters, abductions and gunning down of children, and other atrocities, indicate a government that is out of control and willing to squash protest at any cost,” said the statement by Center for Human Rights in Iran.
While the lawyer has previously supported at least some sanctions against Tehran, Ebadi’s intervention comes not only after six weeks of protests in Iran but with the US in recent weeks showing hesitancy toward talks aimed at reviving the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Under a restored JCPOA, Iran would gain access to funds frozen abroad and lifting of US sanctions in return for curbing its nuclear program.
Ebadi was addressing an ‘Arria’ meeting of the United Nations Security Council, an informal gathering sponsored by members of the council or other states to allow informative input from experts or non-state groups. The meeting was sponsored and introduced by US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Albanian ambassador Ferit Hoxha to discuss weeks of protests in Iran following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini after arrest by Tehran ‘morality police.’
Speaking virtually from London, Ebadi said the “demands for justice” by the Amini family had “so far yielded no results.” Ebadi called on “western governments and especially the United States of America to refrain from subscribing [to] any type of agreements that will help the survival of the regime, as the Islamic Republic does not spend the funds for the welfare of the people but on the contrary provides and buys more weapons, which in turn cause more killing in Iran and the region.”
Ebadi, who left Iran in 2009, said the UN should set up an investigation into “recent repressions in Iran,” citing the 2017 precedent of Myanmar, and demanded the withdrawal of ambassadors of the “governments of the free world” from Iran with their representation reduced to charge d’affaires. She called for the removal of Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and for the establishment of a “democratic and secular government.”
Also addressing the Arria meeting virtually, the US Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran Javaid Rehman highlighted an “absence of accountability” in Iran, arguing that official investigations into Amini’s death had “failed to meet the minimum [standards] required.”Rehman argued Iranian family law, the age of criminal responsibility, and employment practices were all discriminatory, creating a situation of “gender apartheid.”
‘Powder-keg moment’
Rehman called for an international “independent investigative mechanism” to investigate the state’s response to six weeks of protests, in which he said at least 277 people had been killed, including 67 in Sistan-Baluchestan province.
The third speaker, Iran-born Hollywood actress Nazanin Boniadi, who was present in New York, called Amini’s death a “murder” that had been “the powder-keg moment that ignited this most recent uprising.” She said that the slogan ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ was a “declaration of opposition to a regime…built on being anti-women, pro-martyrdom, and repressive.”
Boniadi disputed the “myth…perpetuated by global pundits…that compulsory hejab is a cultural issue that we shouldn’t interfere with.” She also rejected “another myth, that this regime is reformable,” and argued that presidential and other elections could not “make a difference.” She said that “the potential for the current protests to transform Iran from theocracy to representative government could be a geopolitical game-changer, and the single most important key to bringing about stability in the Middle East.”
US ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, sitting in front of White House Special Envoy Rob Malley, said the US would support an international investigation into human rights in Iran, and had already sanctioned Iran’s ‘morality police.’ Arria meetings, first established in 1992 by Venezuelan Ambassador Diego Arria, have sometimes led to UN Security Council resolutions.