PARIS: Security forces used tear gas and live fire to disperse protesters in Iran, rights groups said on Thursday (Jan 8), as people angered by economic crisis kept up their challenge to the authorities and exiled opposition groups urged new protests as well as strikes.
Twelve days of protests have shaken the clerical authorities under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei already battling economic crisis after years of sanctions and recovering from the June war against Israel.
The movement, which originated with a shutdown on the Tehran bazaar on Dec 28 after the rial plunged to record lows, has spread nationwide and is now being marked by larger scale demonstrations.
Authorities have blamed unrest on “rioters” and the judiciary chief has vowed there would be “no leniency” in bringing them to justice.
On Wednesday, an Iranian police officer was stabbed to death west of Tehran “during efforts to control unrest”, the Iranian Fars news agency said.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the 1979 Islamic revolution and a key exiled opposition figure, said the turnout on Wednesday had been “unprecedented” in this wave of demonstrations and called for major new protests Thursday evening.
He said in a message on social media he had received reports the “regime is deeply frightened and is attempting, once again, to cut off the internet” to thwart the protests.
Iraq-based Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, including the Komala party which is outlawed by Tehran, called for a general strike on Thursday in Kurdish-populated areas in western Iran which have seen intense protest activity.
SOLEIMANI STATUES ATTACKED
The HRANA monitor published a video of protesters in Kuhchenar in the southern Fars province cheering overnight as they pulled down a statue of the former foreign operations commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in January 2020 and is hailed as a national hero by the Islamic republic.
Persian-language TV channels based outside Iran also posted images of a statue of Soleimani in the central city of Kashan being set on fire. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.
HRANA said according to its count protests had taken place in 348 locations over the last 11 days in all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
It also published a video of people massing late at night in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj and lighting fires in the streets and also images of security forces using tear gas to disperse a protest in the Caspian Sea town of Tonekabon.
Images it said were taken Wednesday in the western city of Abadan showing security forces firing on protesters.