A human rights group said nearly 200 people had been killed by police as nationwide protests against the Iranian regime enter their fourth week.
Summary
A human rights group said nearly 200 people had been killed by police as nationwide protests against the Iranian regime enter their fourth week.
- The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights said at least 185 people, including at least 19 children, had been killed in the protests as of Saturday.
- The nationwide protests began after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after her arrest for showing a lock of her hair in public, which is a crime in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Iranian security forces fired on protesters in two northwestern cities on Saturday and at least two people were killed.
- The leaderless protest movement is made up of women and young people and has spread the length and breadth of the largest Middle Eastern country.
- The U.S. State Department said Friday the Biden administration would be coordinating with other Western powers on its response to Iran’s “bloody crackdown.”
- The Guardian reported that Iranian security forces were filmed arresting schoolchildren on school grounds in Iranian Kurdistan.
- CNN shared footage of the moment when an Iranian state broadcast was apparently hacked during its Saturday nightly news program.
- NBC News reported a new vector of protests – schoolgirls defying authority – is stymying the regime response as young people realize the movement is becoming “a struggle for the future.”
- The Telegraph urged Western governments to support the protesters instead of appeasing the ayatollahs by rejecting a revived Iran nuclear deal.
- The Wall Street Journal said the protests’ longevity and iconic gesture – women removing their government-mandated hijabs in public – has made them “more durable than previous challenges to Tehran’s leaders and could pose a continuing threat.”
- National Review noted the Iran Human Rights report said protesters had been killed in 17 of Iran’s 31 provinces, including 90 deaths in the city of Zahedan alone during a protest over the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl by the city’s police chief.
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© Dominic Moore, 2022
