প্রকাশ: 06/11/2022
President Ebrahim
Raisi said Iran's cities were "safe and sound" after what he called a
failed attempt by the United States to repeat the 2011 Arab uprisings in the
Islamic Republic, Iranian media reported on Saturday as protests continued for a
50th day.
Iran's clerical leadership has struggled to suppress
demonstrations which erupted in September after the death of young Kurdish
Iranian woman Mahsa Amini who had been detained by morality police for flouting
strict laws on women's dress.
Hundreds of people, mostly protesters, have been killed
according to activists in one of the most serious waves of unrest to sweep the
country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution which overthrew the US-backed Shah.
As Iranian authorities marked the anniversary this week of
the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, President Joe
Biden backed the protesters, saying: "We're gonna free Iran. They're gonna
free themselves pretty soon."
Students and women have led many of the current protests,
with women throwing off and burning veils in defiance of the strict dress codes
and students chanting down officials on university campuses, according to
unverified video footage.
"The Americans and other enemies sought to destabilise
Iran by implementing the same plans as in Libya and Syria, but they
failed," Raisi was quoted by Iranian news agencies as telling a group of
students on Friday.
A popular uprising in Libya led to a NATO intervention in
2011 and the overthrow and killing of the country's leader Muammar Gaddafi by rebel
fighters. In Syria, mass demonstrations against Iran's ally President Bashar
al-Assad were confronted with force and the country spiralled into a conflict
which continues 11 years on.
By contrast, Iranian cities were now "safe and
sound", Raisi said, promising retribution for the unrest the country had
seen.
Slogans, crackdown
The activist HRANA news agency said 314 protesters had been
killed in the unrest as of Friday, including 47 minors. Some 38 members of the
security forces had also been killed. At least 14,170 people have been
arrested, including 392 students, in protests in 136 cities and towns, and 134
universities, it said.
Some of the worst bloodshed has been in Iran's southeastern
province of Sistan-Baluchistan, where many of the predominantly Shi'ite Muslim
country's Sunni minority live.
Senior Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid said the response to
Friday's protests in the southeastern city of Khash had been tougher than
elsewhere in the country.
"Should live ammunition be the response to slogans and
stone throwing? One wonders ... why protesting people of this province are
mercilessly massacred?" the cleric asked in a statement on his website.
Amnesty International said up to 10 people may have been
killed after security forces opened fire on protesters who threw stones and
were reported to have attacked a government building.
Students in a dozen universities in Tehran and in Karaj,
west of the capital, in the northern city of Rasht, and Mashhad in the
northeast protested on Saturday, chanting slogans such as "Woman, Life,
Freedom," according to videos posted by HRANA.
Rights group Hengaw posted a video which it said was from
Sanandaj, capital of Kurdistan province, with protesters starting fires to
block a main street late on Saturday. There were also protests in the cities of
Bukan, Saqez, and Marivan in the northwest.
A social media video said to be from the southwestern city
of Ahvaz showed a young man torching a statue of Quds Force Commander Qassem
Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in 2020 in Iraq.
Reuters could not verify the videos.
The crisis has dragged Iran's currency to new lows. The U.S.
dollar was selling for 362,100 rials on the unofficial market on Saturday,
after losing nearly 12% of its value since the protests started, according to
foreign exchange website Bonbast.com.
In an apparent effort to curb the currency's fall, the
government on Saturday authorised online sales by currency dealers, to make it
easier for people to buy hard currency.
The Intelligence Ministry said it had blocked the bank
accounts of 2,300 people accused of involvement in the currency black market
and that they may face legal action, state media reported.
- Reuters
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