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LAST UPDATE | 26 Oct 2022
IRANIAN SECURITY FORCES have opened fire on protesters who massed in their thousands in Mahsa Amini’s hometown to mark 40 days since her death, according to a human rights group.
“Security forces have shot tear gas and opened fire on people in Zindan square, Saqez city,” Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran’s Kurdish regions, tweeted, without specifying whether there were any dead or wounded.
Despite heightened security measures, columns of mourners had poured into Saqez in the western Kurdistan province to pay tribute to Amini at her grave at the end of the traditional mourning period.
Internet access has been blocked for “security reasons” in Saqez, Amini’s hometown.
“Following the tensions and scattered confrontations that occurred after the ceremony, the internet connection was cut in the town of Saqez for security reasons,” the ISNA news agency said.
Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died on 16 September, three days after her arrest in Tehran by the notorious morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women.
Anger flared at her funeral last month and quickly sparked the biggest wave of protests to rock the Islamic republic in almost three years. Young women have led the charge, burning their hijab headscarves and confronting security forces.
“Death to the dictator,” mourners chanted at the Aichi cemetery outside Saqez, before many were seen heading to the governor’s office in the city centre.
Iran’s Fars news agency said around 2,000 people gathered in Saqez and chanted “Woman, life, freedom”.
But thousands more were seen making their way in cars, on motorbikes and on foot along a highway, through fields and even across a river, in videos widely shared online by activists and rights groups.
Noisily clapping, shouting and honking car horns, mourners packed the highway linking Saqez to the cemetery eight kilometres away, in images that Hengaw told AFP it had verified.
‘Year of blood’
“This year is the year of blood, Seyed Ali will be toppled,” a group of them chanted in a video verified by AFP, referring to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Kurdistan, Kurdistan, the graveyard of fascists,” others were heard singing in a video shared by activists on Twitter. AFP was unable to immediately verify the footage.
Hengaw said strikes were underway in Saqez as well as Divandarreh, Marivan, Kamyaran and Sanandaj, and in Javanrud and Ravansar in the western province of Kermanshah.
The Norway-based rights group said Iranian football stars Ali Daei and Hamed Lak had travelled to Saqez “to take part in the 40th day” service.
They had been staying at the Kurd Hotel but were “taken to the government guesthouse … under guard by the security forces”, it said.
Daei has previously run into trouble with authorities over his online support for the Amini protests.
Kurdistan governor Esmail Zarei-Kousha said the situation in Saqez was calm and dismissed as “completely false” reports that roads into the city had been shut.
“The enemy and its media … are trying to use the 40-day anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death as a pretext to cause new tensions but fortunately the situation in the province is completely stable,” he said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.
Fresh student rallies
Hengaw said most of Saqez was “empty” as so many people had left the city to join the ceremony to commemorate Amini.
The social media channel 1500tasvir, which chronicles rights violations by Iran’s security forces, said fresh protests flared elsewhere including at universities in Tehran, Mashhad in Iran’s northeast, and Ahvaz in the southwest.
Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said the security forces’ crackdown on the Amini protests has claimed the lives of at least 141 demonstrators, in an updated death toll released yesterday.
Amnesty International says the “unrelenting brutal crackdown” has killed at least 23 children, while IHR said at least 29 children have been slain.
More than five weeks after Amini’s death, the demonstrations show no signs of ending. They have been fuelled by public outrage over the crackdown that has claimed the lives of other young women and girls.
Iran’s Forensic Organisation said in a report this month that Amini’s death “was not caused by blows to the head and vital organs and limbs of the body”.
But lawyers acting for her family have rejected the findings and called for a re-examination of her death by another commission.
Iran announced sanctions today targeting individuals and media outlets in the European Union, in retaliation for the bloc’s punitive measures imposed last week on the morality police and other officials over the crackdown.
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Is there any logical reason why farming and eating dog should be illegal? The animals we normally eat (cow, sheep, goat, etc) tend to be herbivores, so are easier to farm and taste different than carnivores. But beyond that, surely if we can humanely farm and eat species X, we should be allowed to eat species Y if it is also farmed in a humane manner?
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: How many pet cows do you have? Do you take your goat for a walk everyday.
Whilst there may be some validity to your argument I think you’ll find the overwhelming majority of people actually see their pet dogs as something more, even part of the family. So the prospect of chowing down on Lassie is not very appealing to most.
@damien leen: I don’t think Koreans were eating their pet dogs though.
@Sean O’Dhubhghaill: have you seen the way they’re killed, thrown alive into a pot of boiling water…r u ok with that!
@Clare Power: Hot dogs? Mmmmm,I love ‘em
@Larry Betts: stop Larry, yr supposed to be the funny man here
@Clare Power: boohoo
@Tom Dillon: oh that’s alrite then… C’mon man!
@Clare Power: I hope the EU doesn’t now ban German Shepherd Pie
@Larry Betts: I said your supposed to be funny Larry!!
@Clare Power: I’m never again going to ask for a doggie bag whenever I’m in a restaurant.
I’ve no time for people that haven’t empathy for animals, there’s something missing in their soul…my opinion…
About time
No more wokking the dog, as it were…
Well done, South Korea.
Lassie ain’t coming home!
For those who can’t now eat dog,they will feast on tasty Not Poodles
Koreans have swapped dogs for babies. The population has gone through the floor. By the way dog stew or boshintang is delicious – a little like a spicy lamb stew. Why should people be forced to abandon their own foid culture? Westerners complain about migrants swamping their own culture while imposing their values and culture on Asian, African and other indigenous cultures. No one who supports the banning of dog meat in Korea should oppose the imposition of Sharia in Ireland.
Personally, I think it’s barking mad decision by the government.
Banning dog meat will only lead farmers to go underground with their business.
Instead of a regulated price for the meat, meat prices could fetch a higher price due to the ban from the dog meat ban.
Anyone for a Chinese ?
@Jb Walshe: It’s only now that I realise what the Indians put in a madras curry,omg
The way some people anthromorphosise dogs, and cats, is beyond ridiculous. If some people want to eat dogs then let them.
Wokery. Wok wokery.
It’s not the eating I have a problem with, it’s the way they are “prepared”, the wire binding the limbs and mouth, the tape to stop them screaming , it’s the skinning alive, the boiling alive, the torture to promote the myth that the meat tastes better. I, for one, am extremely happy with the ban, it should be immediate, not in 3 years. It’s not just farmed dogs, it’s the stolen pets too that are affected.
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