According to YouTube recordings, Iran has deployed mounted police to quell the seven-week-long protests started by the death in detention of Mahsa Amini. A protest movement erupted when 22-year-old Amini died following her imprisonment for allegedly violating Iran’s strict hijab wear regulations for women.
According to a Norway-based monitoring group, young women have led the way by removing and burning their head coverings, singing anti-regime slogans, and confronting security personnel on the street despite a crackdown that has killed more than 300 people.
According to a video released on social media and confirmed by the AFP, the authorities have dispatched a posse of police on horseback to quell the protesters in Tehran. The elite unit is pictured in front of a row of Iranian flags on a major thoroughfare in the Sadeghiyeh area of northwest Tehran.
In the past, the mounted component of Iran’s police force, known as Asvaran, has been seen on the streets of the Iranian capital, but only during parades; their deployment during protests is uncommon.
An unverified image from a video released to Twitter on November 6, 2022 purports to depict anti-government protesters in Mariwan, a Kurdish enclave in the northwest of Iran. Twitter
Amini, an Iranian of Kurdish descent, passed away on September 16, three days after her detention by the morality police in Tehran sparked countrywide demonstrations.
The Iranian government has employed a variety of strategies to quell the protests, which officials refer to as “riots.”
The security personnel have used live bullets, bird shot, tear gas, and even paintballs straight at protestors. In addition to imposing internet restrictions, such as restricting access to Instagram and WhatsApp, the government has engaged in a campaign of mass arrests.
Iran Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Norway that depends on a network of sources within Iran, reported in its most recent update on Saturday that at least 304 individuals, including 41 children and 24 women, had been slain in the crackdown on statewide rallies since mid-September.
Despite the high death toll, the group’s head, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said in the statement, “Iranians continue to take to the streets, more resolute than ever to bring about fundamental change. The Islamic Republic’s response is more bloodshed.”
Iran’s widespread antigovernment demonstrations may provoke additional repression. 04:14
He urged the international community to exert pressure on Iran to halt its repression of protestors.
Hundreds of individuals, including protestors, journalists, and activists, have been swept up in the arrest wave.
On Tuesday, Iran’s judiciary said that more than 1,000 individuals had been legally prosecuted for their participation in the protests, and a spokesman pledged to treat them harshly.
“Now, the public, including protestors who are opposed to riots, demands that the court and security institutions deal with the few people who have caused disruptions in a firm, deterrent, and lawful manner,” a spokesman for the judiciary told Reuters.
In Iran, a deadly jail fire occurs amid a rise of anti-regime protesters at 07:18
Two female journalists were the most recent members of Iran’s battered civil society to be charged with propaganda against the regime.
Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, both of whom have been incarcerated for more than a month, “have been remanded in detention for propaganda against the system and conspiracy against national security,” Setayeshi said on Tuesday.
Hamedi, a 30-year-old journalist for the reformist Shargh newspaper, was detained on September 20 after visiting the hospital where Amini was in a coma for three days before to her death.
Mohammadi, a reporter for the Ham Mihan daily, was arrested on September 29 after covering Amini’s funeral in her village of Saqez, Kurdistan region.