Iran protests: Eighteen days of suppression, over 130 killed

Anti-government protests continued throughout Iran for an eighteenth consecutive night over the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

Mahsa, a 22-year-old girl from Saqqez, Kurdistan, was on a trip with her family to visit relatives in Tehran when she was arrested for not wearing a “proper hijab,” Iranwire news website reports.

She was transferred to a detention centre but, two hours later, was taken to Kasra Hospital. After two days in a coma she died on September 16. Officials initially declared the cause of her coma to be sudden cardiac arrest, but the published image of her bruised and bleeding ear raised doubts, and medical experts believe that a sudden cardiac arrest cannot lead to bruises and ear bleeding. The widespread view is that the bruises were caused by a head injury and cerebral haemorrhage which put Amini into the coma.

Amini's father told journalists that eyewitnesses reported seeing his daughter beaten at the detention centre. Saleh Nikbakht, the family’s lawyer, has asked for the release of video recordings taken by body-worn cameras by the arresting officers.

The authorities have not yet given a clear answer about what happened to Mahsa Amini during her arrest, her transfer to the detention centre and inside the detention centre.

The hacker group Edalat-e-Ali claimed on its Telegram channel that it had obtained an official document reviewing the arrest and death of Mahsa Amini. They say it claims that Mahsa Amini hit her head on the pavement during her arrest. However, doubts have been raised about the veracity of the document. Mohammad Baqer Bakhtiar, one of the former senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, also published an audio file in which he claimed that reliable sources in forensic medicine diagnosed the cause of Mahsa Amini's coma and death as a "cranial injury". The doctors who examined the pictures of Mahsa's bruised and bloody ear in the hospital unanimously say that she fell into a coma and died due to cerebral haemorrhage.

The death of Mahsa Amini in detention caused outrage among Iranians and ignited nationwide protests.

The largest protests in Iran since November 2019 began in Saqqez and Sanandaj in Kurdistan province, on September 17, and swiftly spread to all provinces across the country with demonstrations held in at least 83 cities. In solidarity with the protests in Iran, rallies and demonstrations were held in more 150 cities across the world in response to a call for a Global Day of Action for Iran by the families of victims of the ill-fated Ukrainian flight PS752. More than 50,000 people gathered in Toronto in solidarity with the protesters in Iran.

But the protests have been violently suppressed by security forces using live rounds and other lethal weapons, which have so far led to the deaths of at least 133 people, according to human rights watchdogs. The death toll has risen since the security forces fired live rounds at protesters in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchestan province, killing at least 50, according to reports.

Footage of the protests show security forces shooting at the protesters and bystanders indiscriminately. The videos show those who were already restrained being severely beaten and electrocuted. In several cases, security forces were filmed firing teargas and gunshots in residential areas. According to Amnesty International, leaked official documents reveal that the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Iran’s highest military body, issued an order to the commanders of armed forces in all provinces to “severely confront” protesters.

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General, warned that “the Iranian authorities knowingly decided to harm or kill people who took to the streets to express their anger at decades of repression and injustice. Amid an epidemic of systemic impunity that has long prevailed in Iran, dozens of men, women and children have been unlawfully killed in the latest round of bloodshed.”

The severe disruption in communications within Iran has made the independent verification of casualties extremely difficult. As the protests have spread, the internet has been shut down or severely disrupted in most parts of the country. Most of the major international social media platforms are already restricted in Iran, and web monitoring company NetBlocks has detected further restrictions on WhatsApp, Instagram and Skype.

Moreover, the security forces have been systematically attempting to hide the real number of the death toll by arresting the victims’ family members or threatening them into silence. It is claimed they have been stealing and secretly burying the bodies of the killed protesters. In one of the most recent cases, the security forces took the body of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami and secretly buried her without her family’s presence and arrested her aunt Atash Shakarami who spoke to the media about Nika’s body being found 10 days after she participated in the protests on September 20.

A roll of the dead

IranWire is keeping a live record of the names, pictures and details of all those independently confirmed to have been killed so far. The list has been created using various sources, including eyewitnesses, victims’ family and relatives, local and international human rights organizations and media outlets.

The current list shows the majority of the protesters killed were under 25. Among them there are at least 12 children as young as 15-17. The highest death toll so far has been recorded in Sistan and Baluchestan province followed by Gilan, Mazandaran and West Azerbaijan.

The demography of the protesters killed indicates that the security forces resorted to deadly force in larger scale in the borderline provinces such as Sistan and Baluchestan and West Azerbaijan, where the majority of the population belongs to the ethnic and religious minority groups.

According to IranWire’s findings, the cause of death in majority of the cases was direct gunfire by the security forces at protesters’ vital organs, mostly in the head or chest. In the case of Zahedan, live ammunition was also fired at the protesters from military helicopters which leaves no doubt that state agents were involved and shot to kill.