Iran Arrests Families of Protest Victims During Commemoration
Iran’s security forces arrested dozens of families of the victims of state violence in two Kurdish cities where they gathered to commemorate their loved ones.
Iran’s security forces arrested dozens of families of the victims of state violence in two Kurdish cities where they gathered to commemorate their loved ones.
The families were from the cities of Dehgolan, Sanandaj, Divandareh and Saqqez, who had traveled on Friday to visit the graves of those killed during the nationwide protests in Bukan and Saqqez.
The petitioning families chanted, "We Will Stand Until the End" and "Woman Life Freedom".
In Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, where Mahsa Amini’s body is laid to rest, dozens held the pictures of their loved ones.
However, regime agents arrested and transferred about 40 of them to an unknown location, including six mothers of young victims.
During the recent protests in Iran, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Amini in September 2022, security forces killed hundreds of people and many more received permanent injuries. More than 20,000 people, including university students, actors and journalists were also detained.
The authorities not only failed to accept any responsibility but they put pressure on some of the victims' families who made statements against regime officials during funerals or on social networks. Relatives of many victims killed by the government have been summoned for questioning and arrested.
According to human rights groups, the Islamic Republic has killed over 500 people, including at least 70 children, during its crackdown on the ongoing protests.
He said the government fails to create jobs which forces many to engage in small criminal activities only to survive, and then hanged when they are caught.
In his sermon the outspoken Mowlavi (title for Sunni cleric) told his congregation in Zahedan, capital of southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan Province, that lack of jobs in his province and some other impoverished areas is the prime reason people are driven to smuggling fuel, minor drug-related offences, or drug trafficking.
In Iran gasoline and especially diesel are extremely cheap (around 10 US cents per gallon) due to heavy government subsidization. This leads to smuggling fuel to neighboring countries such as Pakistan which has long borders with Sistan-Baluchestan.
Many of these individuals, the cleric said, end up in prison or are even executed for committing crimes that involve profiting as little as 5 million rials ($10).
“People have to do all sorts of things just to earn their bread,” he told his congregation who took to the streets after the prayers for the 36th consecutive week to chant anti-government slogans.
Haal Vsh, a website dedicated to human rights and events in Iran’s Baluchestan, reported Friday that security forces cracked down on young Baluchis in various areas of Zahedan after the protests and arrested many.
The Sunni cleric who has proven to be the unofficial voice of the country’s Sunni population has become popular even among Shiites for standing up to the regime and delivering fiery speeches every week since September when the Women, Life, Freedom protests spread across the country.
In his sermon Abdolhamid also brought up the issue of justice for the victims of what has come to be known as the Bloody Friday of Zahedan. On September 30, 2022, security forces opened fire on civilian anti-government protesters killing more than 93 protesters including children and onlookers in Zahedan after Friday prayers.
“Carrying out justice would have brought tranquility and peace [to the locals],” he said. The government has not taken action against those security forces who opened fire on September 30.
“You never remedied our troubles or asked us about what gave us pain,” Abdolhamid said, adding that calm will not be established unless the complaints of workers, teachers, civil servants and pensioners are addressed and remedied.
As Sunni Muslims, Baluch citizens are both an ethnic and religious minority. Estimates of the Iranian Baluch population range from 1.5 to 2 million people. The Baluch community – along with the Kurds -- has always been among the most persecuted minorities and has the largest number of people executed in the country.
Most Baluchis are executed over drug-related charges, but activists say their trials lack due process and poverty-stricken drug mules are often executed without having had proper legal representation.
According to Haal Vsh, the execution of Baluch citizens has increased significantly since last year’s nation-wide protests. It said in a recent report that 182 people were executed in 23 prisons across Iran in the past year of which81% were drug-related.
Speaking on the sidelines of a ceremony in the northern province of Mazandaran Wednesday, Brigadier General Radan said his force will be reporting lack of adequate action in enforcing hijab laws by government offices as administrative infringement.
He also vowed that police will be surveilling Caspian Sea beaches, in Mazandaran and Gilan provinces, by special patrols and electronically to prevent any behavior violating hijab laws.
Threats against unveiled women have increased with the arrival of summer which has always been a season for women to ignore the strict government dress code.
In July 2022, after weeks of harsher measures on the streets, President Ebrahim Raisi ordered all government entities to strictly implement a “chastity and hijab” law approved by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council under hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.
Not long after that, the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of hijab enforcers, morality police, fuelled protests that spread throughout the country and lasted for several months.
Since March hardliners have tried to put an end to women’s increasing defiance of the compulsory hijab and to reclaim the lost ground but to no avail: More women are now walking around, commuting, shopping, and jogging unveiled.
Iran's media published the final version of a new hijab bill prepared jointly by the judiciary and the government. An earlier draft which was revealed two weeks ago was strongly criticized by hardliners which saw its punishments for unveiling “too lenient” to be able to stop women from unveiling.
Punishments proposed in the bill are mainly cash fines ranging from 5 million rials ($10) to 240 million rials ($480) for repeat offenders, and deprivation from employment and social media activity for athletes, celebrity artists and activists who unveil.
The bill, however, also includes provisions against “anyone” other than authorized entities, who confronts citizens in public and uses violence and threats against unveiled women.
Hardliners such as Raisi’s very influential father-in-law, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, who represents Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Khorasan-e Razavi Province, have strongly criticized the bill.
Alamolhoda alleged on May 26 that the bill, if passed, would promote unveiling rather than prevent it.
Firebrand Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the flagship hardliner newspaper Kayhan wrote about the first version of the bill on May 21. “A look at the content of the bill and comparison with the existing laws suggests that the bill has been prepared with the possible aim of removing the existing legal obstacles [against unveiling] and preparing the ground for the spread of this nasty and abominable phenomenon rather than taking action against unveiling,”
The population in general, however, even in many smaller and more conservative areas of the country, appears to have become much more tolerant of women who do not dress according to the prescribed codes and their newfound freedom from the hijab.
“Women know that it’s now or never because the mullahs are afraid of more protests. They are persisting with all their might, given this opportunity, to normalize the presence of unveiled women in the society,” Ronak, a 34-year-old engineer in Tehran told Iran International.
“They can pass any laws they want to convince their supporters they are doing something or reinstate their control but after the recent protests they have realized that the enforcement of such laws by force could be very costly and one little push too far may cause the Berlin Wall to crash down,” she said. “That’s why they are telling the vigilantes to back down.”
Referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's recent speech in which he said, "The enemy has started to prepare its artillery against the upcoming elections in Iran," conservative commentator Mohammad Mohajeri quipped in a column in the reformist Etemad newspaper: "What can the enemy do to harm the elections?" and explained that "downplaying the importance of voter turnout, manipulating the election process, rigging the elections, and helping unqualified people to win the elections are among the things the enemy can do to that end."
The commentator was referring to the interference of the Guardian Council, an undemocratic body inserted into the constitution, that rejected hundreds of candidates in the parliamentary election in 2020, and again rejected qualified contenders in the 2021 presidential vote.
Mohajeri pointed out that the enemy cannot interfere with the process of elections. Those who interfere are Islamic Republic officials. executives, supervisory bodies, and security organizations. The enemies will begin their attacks and propaganda only after state officials and institutions make big mistakes by intervening in the election process with the aim of changing the results, he said.
Mohajeri added: "The Guardian Council is where most of such mistakes are made. It is involved from the beginning to the end of the elections and its behavior has always been controversial. The council vets the candidates and appoints the inspectors and supervisors."
He further pointed out that many of those who have been disqualified by the Guardian Council in previous years are well-known political figures who would have been more useful than the current members of the parliament.
Meanwhile, reformist commentator Abbas Abdi accused current officials of making the government useless by bringing it into constant confrontation with the people and their demands. This approach, he said, “will tire everyone including yourselves and I can see the signs of this fatigue in your behavior.”
"The government's interventionist approach and its insistence on excessive and often unnecessary control and punishment, as well as its confrontational approach and its refusal to hold any dialogue have a destructive impact on many economic, political, social and cultural processes including the country's foreign policy," Abdi said.
"When we follow the news, we see many examples of that confrontational behavior for instance in trying to control prices through issuing orders. Everyone, except the government, knows that this does not work. Not only it does not work, it also leads to corruption. The government uses the same wrong methods to fix interest rates, foreign exchange rates and the price of eggs, utilities, fuel, rent and so on.
The government intervenes in everything, including dress code and childbirth, which are issues that cannot be regulated through confrontation, penalties and imprisonment," Abdi added.
The prominent commentator stressed that such methods can only widen the gap between the people and the government.
Meanwhile, shedding light on the bigger picture, former government spokesman and moderate politician Ali Rabiei wrote in article in Etemad that "All revolutions in the Middle East have given governments in the region a license to violate citizenship and human rights as well as democratic rules."
He suggested that governments that rule in the name of revolutions need to find a way to reconcile revolutionary values and citizens' rights by giving the people the right to complain to the judiciary system if government officials undermine their essential rights.