Iran students, workers continue to protest amid crackdown

Paris, France (AFP):

Iranian protesters remain defiant with students staging sit-ins and some industrial workers going on strike despite restrictions by the government.

Videos posted on social media indicated that protests flared at various points in the capital and other cities over recent days, with women burning headscarves and shouting slogans against the Islamic republic.

Kurdish rights group Hengaw accused the authorities of using heavy weaponry, including “shelling” on neighbourhoods and “machine gun fire”, in the northwestern city of Sanandaj — claims which could not be independently confirmed amid widespread internet blocks.

Gunshots were also heard in Saqqez, the home town of Mahsa Amini who died in police custody after arrest for not complying with the dress code.

The authorities in Iran have released a medical report blaming Amini’s custodial death on a pre-existing condition.

Oslo-based non-government group Iran Human Rights (IHR) shared images of a sit-in protest at the northern Gilan university and of high school girls in the northern town of Mahabad removing their headscarves.

It also posted a video which it said showed a large crowd of students in Tehran on Monday denouncing the “poverty and corruption” in Iran and shouting “death to this tyranny”.

Workers on strike 

Footage shared on social media, including by news site Iran Wire, said students at Tehran women’s university Al-Zahra shouted criticism of the regime during a visit on Saturday by President Ebrahim Raisi.

Students at universities including Tehran Azad also painted their hands red to symbolize the crackdown by the authorities, images showed.

State news agency IRNA said police used tear gas late Sunday “to disperse the crowds in dozens of locations in Tehran.”

Analysts say that the multi-faceted nature of the protests — ranging from street marches to student strikes to individual actions of defiance — has complicated the state’s attempts to quell the movement.

This could make the protests an even bigger challenge to the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, than the November 2019 protests against energy price hikes that were bloodily put down.

There have also been signs of labour unrest. Videos broadcast by Persian media based outside Iran showed striking workers burning tyres outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the country’s southwest.

IHR said workers were blocking roads there, and there were also reports of strikes at refineries in Abadan in the west of Iran and Kengan in the south.

‘Chaos and disorder’

The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini’s death has claimed at least 95 lives, according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.

State media have said 24 members of the security forces have been killed.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani has warned the government would “not stand with its hands tied in the face of chaos and disorder”.

Activists also accuse the authorities of a campaign of mass arrests and travel bans to quell the protests.

Ali Daei, once the world’s top international goal scorer in men’s football, had his passport confiscated on returning to Tehran from abroad after having bitterly criticised the Iranian government on social media.