New anti-government protests erupted across Iran on Wednesday, with photographs of protests appearing on social media despite serious restrictions on the web. Iranian security forces in the cities of Sanandaj and Zahedan.
Also on Wednesday, the Norway-based Iranian human rights organization updated its estimate of the number of protesters killed by the Iranian government during more than 3 weeks of almost unprecedented unrest to 201. The organization said 23 of the victims were children.
In the past, the government had declared only about 40 dead and claimed members of the security forces were among the dead.
The crowds that came to protest on Wednesday gave the impression of coming with a great diversity of ages. Some marched and chanted “Freedom!” while some women threw their necessary headscarves into the air.
Iran’s Center for Human Rights said Tehran lawyers who gathered outside Iran’s Central Bar Association were attacked by security forces with tear gas to disperse them. At least 3 lawyers were arrested, the organization said, adding that an eyewitness said two white vans arrested about two dozen people.
Sanandaj is the capital of West Kurdistan province, where citizens and human rights teams have accused security forces of firing tear gas and indiscriminate ammunition at houses and protesters at point-blank range.
Iran’s internal and external medical professionals also told CBS News that since the protests began on Sept. 16, many injured protesters have been turned away from public hospitals or detained while seeking treatment.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, condemned the “shocking violence” and called for sanctions opposed to “those of this repression. “
Anger at the regime has been intense in Iran’s Kurdish regions. Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of Iran’s “morality police” sparked protests last month, in Saqqez, a city in Kurdistan province.
On Tuesday, Kurdish rights organization Hengaw reported that at least five civilians had been killed and more than 400 injured in violence inflicted by government forces over the past 3 days.
In Zahedan, in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, security forces killed at least 90 others in recent protests, according to Iran Human Rights.
The heavy web restrictions imposed by the Islamic regime make it difficult to clearly perceive what is happening in Sanandaj and Iran. Defense organization Netblocks reported what it called a “major disruption” of web traffic in Iran as of Wednesday morning, dropping to about 25% of its peak.
The provinces of Kurdistan and Sistan and Balochistan are home to ethnic minorities that have long been marginalized and have a history of fighting for more rights and recognition.
They are also far from Tehran’s capital, an explanation for why the government is more willing to use force there, especially in recent days, citizens told CBS News.
Across the country, human rights teams say many young people have been detained, most of them in adult prisons. The Tehran-based Society for the Protection of Children’s Rights reported that families do not know the fate of their children and do not have lawyers.
Iranian Education Minister Yousof Nouri said schoolchildren had been arrested in the protests, Iran’s Shargh newspaper reported Tuesday. He declined to give the number of other people arrested, the newspaper reported, saying the detained academics were being held in “psychological centers. “not prisons.
Once they have been “reformed,” they will be allowed to return to school, he added.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated his claim that his country’s enemies are to blame for fomenting the demonstrations, though he called them “scattered riots” and fan plots, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Iranian-American journalist and activist Omid Memarian rejected the claim that the unrest was fueled by an outside power.
“National protests in Sanandaj and Sistan and Balochistan is the most productive indication that Iranians, whether from minority teams or from the capital, see themselves as united and opposed to the Islamic Republic,” Memarian said. demonstration as separatist or ED across the US. “I’m going to be the U. S. or Israel, but that trick doesn’t intimidate people anymore. “
“The fact is that Iranians are suffering from the abusive and authoritarian regime of the regime, whether in Tehran or in the provinces,” he added.