Iran Hijab Protest: The commander of Iran’s Army said on Wednesday that “rioters” who are protesting against strict dress code would have no place in the Islamic republic of Iran if the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered a tougher crackdown on nationwide protests, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
“… if he decides to deal with them, the rioters will have no place in the country,” said Brigadier General Kiumars Heydari.
Anti-government demonstrations erupted in September after the brutal killing of a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who was detained by Iranian morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code imposed on women.
The protests quickly turned into a popular uprising involving people from students to doctors to lawyers to workers to athletes.
Hejdarí was speaking 40 days after the bloodshed in the predominantly Sunni town of Zahedan, which has become a hotbed of protests.
Amnesty International said security forces killed at least 66 people there on September 30. Authorities in Zahedan released the police chief and head of the police station near where the murders took place.
Iran has executed two Baloch militants convicted of “terrorism” charges dating back to around 2016, the semi-official ILNA news agency said on Wednesday, a move that may further raise tensions in the volatile Sistan-Baluchistan province where Zahedan is located.
The Baloch minority, estimated to number up to two million people, has faced decades of discrimination and repression, according to human rights groups.
Some of the worst unrest has been in areas home to minority ethnic groups with long-standing grievances against the state, including Sistan-Baluchistan and the Kurdish regions.
On Wednesday, traders in some Kurdish towns went on strike to show respect for the people who were killed in Zahedan, the Kurdish organization Hengaw said.
Traders in the commercial city of Valiasr in Tehran province also closed their businesses to mark the 40th day since the killings, according to HRANA.
The Basij militia and other security forces have taken tough measures in hopes of quelling the unrest, but the fury has not abated.
While past demonstrations have focused on election results or economic woes, the current protesters appear determined to secure a brand new political order in the country, which has been ruled by a clerical establishment since the 1979 revolution.
In a continuing act of resistance, videos posted on Twitter under the hashtag #TurbanTossing show Iranians sneaking up on clerics and knocking their turbans off their heads.
According to the Iranian human rights group Hengaw, schoolgirls in the northwestern Iranian city of Qorveh took to the streets with slogans and asked other Iranians to join them.