Authorities in Iran have blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp after six days of protests over the death of a young woman arrested by morality police, in which at least 17 people died according to a media report. State Thursday.
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But the toll is likely to be much heavier, the opposition NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Oslo, reporting at least 31 civilians killed by the security forces.
The death of Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, has sparked strong condemnation around the world as international NGOs have denounced a “brutal” crackdown on protests.
Mahsa Amini, originally from Kurdistan (north-west), was arrested on September 13 in Tehran for “wearing inappropriate clothes” by the morality police responsible for enforcing the strict dress code in the Islamic Republic, where women must cover up hair and are not allowed to wear short or tight coats or jeans with holes. She died on September 16 in hospital.
AFP
Activists said she was fatally shot in the head, but Iranian officials denied this and announced an investigation.
Demonstrations erupted immediately after his death, affecting fifteen cities across the country.
“Seventeen people including demonstrators and police have perished in the events of the last few days”, according to a new report given by state television which does not give further details. A previous Iranian media report reported seven demonstrators and four police officers killed.
AFP
Iranian officials, however, denied any involvement of security forces in the deaths of the protesters. And the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, on Thursday denounced an “outrageous media war”, saying it was a “conspiracy doomed to failure”.
But like other international NGOs and the UN, Amnesty International denounced a “brutal repression”. She reported “an illegal use of shots, steel balls, tear gas, water cannons and sticks to disperse the demonstrators”.
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Since the beginning of the demonstrations, connections have been slowed down.
“And since Wednesday evening, it is also no longer possible to access Instagram, by decision of the authorities. Access to WhatsApp is also disrupted,” according to the Fars news agency. This measure was taken because of “actions carried out through these social networks by counter-revolutionaries against national security”.
Instagram and WhatsApp were the most used apps in Iran since platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and Tiktok were blocked in recent years. In addition, Internet access is largely filtered or restricted by the authorities.
UN human rights experts have ruled that such “disturbances are usually part of efforts to stifle free speech and limit protests.”
During the protests in several provinces of Iran, demonstrators clashed with security forces, burned police vehicles and chanted anti-government slogans, according to media and activists.
Police responded with tear gas and arrested an unknown number of people, according to Iranian media.
On Thursday, authorities arrested two female photographers, Niloufar Hamedi, of the reformist newspaper Shargh, and Yalda Moayeri, who works for the local press, as well as reform activist Mohammad-Réza Jalaïpour, local media reported.
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According to activists, clashes broke out on Wednesday evening in Mashhad (north-east) demonstrators and security forces who opened fire. In Isfahan (center), protesters tore down a banner showing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The most viral images on social networks are those where we see women setting fire to their headscarves.
“No to the headscarf, no to the turban, yes to freedom and equality!” Shouted demonstrators in Tehran, their slogans having been taken up in solidarity in New York or Istanbul.
According to Azadeh Kian, professor of sociology at the University of Paris Cité and specialist in Iran, “what is unprecedented in these demonstrations is that we find women at the front of the stage”.
Friday, at the call of a government organization, demonstrations in favor of the wearing of the veil must take place across Iran, in particular in front of the University of Tehran after the weekly Muslim prayer, according to the official agency Irna. These “demonstrations aim to condemn the indecent actions of a few mercenaries who have (…) set fire to mosques and the sacred Iranian flag, desecrated the hijab of women, destroyed public property and undermined security”.
The announcement of the death of the young Iranian aroused strong international condemnation: from the UN, the United States, France, the United Kingdom in particular. “We stand with the courageous citizens and courageous women of Iran,” US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday at the UN rostrum.
On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced economic sanctions targeting Iran’s vice police and several security officials for “violence against protesters”, as well as the fate of Mahsa Amini.
The protests of the past few days are among the largest in Iran since those of November 2019, triggered by rising gasoline prices, in the midst of an economic crisis. A hundred cities had been affected by a protest, severely repressed. The official death toll is 230, more than 300 according to Amnesty International.