Protesting schoolgirls, striking workers and violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces: the massive protests in Iran against the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini have not stopped for three weeks. In a spectacular action, a news program becomes a mouthpiece.
The Iranian state television was apparently hacked by members of the opposition during a live broadcast. The BBC reports and shows a screenshot of the action. A newscast was interrupted around 6 p.m. local time on Saturday with images showing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with a target, photos of Mahsa Amini and three other women killed in recent protests.
One of the inscriptions read “Join and rise”, another – “The blood of our youth drips from your hands”. A group called “Adalat Ali” or Ali’s justice claimed to be the authors. The interruption lasted only a few seconds.
Amini was arrested by morality police in Tehran for allegedly not covering her hair properly. The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in custody on September 16, three days after her arrest. Her death has sparked an unprecedented wave of protests across the country.
The young woman’s father on Saturday rejected the Iranian authorities’ official explanation for his daughter’s death. “I saw with my own eyes that blood had come out of Mahsa’s ears and neck,” the London-based Persian-language TV station Iran International quoted the father as saying. The Forensic Medicine Organization of Iran (IMO) said on Friday that Amini died “not from beatings” but from the effects of a surgical procedure that was performed on her at the age of eight for a brain tumor.
Iran’s ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi appeared at the start of the semester with students from Tehran’s Al-Sahra Women’s University. At the same time, young women on campus chanted “Death to the oppressor,” according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR). Raisi said the Iranian students would not fall for the “enemy” and that they would fail. He blames foreign forces for the wave of protests against the leadership in Tehran. On Saturday evening he met the head of the judiciary and the speaker of parliament, as reported by the state news agency IRNA.
At a school in Amini’s hometown of Saghes in Kurdistan Province, girls chanted “Woman, Life, Freedom” and protesters took off their headscarves on the street and waved them over their heads, videos taken on Saturday showed, according to the Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw . Schoolgirls also protested in Sanandaj, the capital of the province of Kurdistan. Horrifying video footage circulating online media around town showed a man being shot dead at the wheel of his car. Provincial police chief Ali Asadi said the man was “killed by anti-revolutionary forces.” A video also circulating showed how angry men appeared to be chasing after a member of the city’s feared Bassij militia and beating the man.
Another video showed a young woman apparently shot dead in Mashhad. A large banner was posted on a highway overpass in Tehran reading, “We are no longer afraid. We will fight,” images verified by AFP news agency showed. In a video shared on the Internet, a man can be seen changing the lettering on a government poster from “The police are the servants of the people” to “The police are the murderers of the people”. The Isna news agency reported a massive presence of security forces in Tehran and especially in the vicinity of universities. There are “isolated” gatherings in Tehran. Street protests also took place in Isfahan, Karaj, Shiraz, Tabriz and other cities, London-based Iran Wire reported.
