The activist and daughter of former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hshemi Rafsanjni, Fazeh Hashemi, was arrested for inciting street protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the “girl with a tail”, the 22-year-old who died while in the custody of the moral police who had detained her because she did not wear a veil properly . According to reports from the Iranian news agency Tasnim, the arrest took place “despite the few people present on the streets”, because the activist participated directly in the protests. Hashemi, 69, is a former journalist and human rights activist in Iran. Her father was president of the Islamic Republic from 1989 to 1997.
According to the Iranian version, supported by the agency, the protests are over but “the anti-Iranian Western media continue to talk about an inflamed climate and are turning to well-known personalities to keep the protest alive”. Independent sources linked to the protests, on the other hand, report demonstrations even today in several cities, despite the harsh repression, which according to estimates by humanitarian organizations has already provoked 75 victims. The restrictions on the Internet, however, make it difficult to spread the videos, as the organizers report: one of the few available shows a woman who takes off her veil and waves her arms in the air in the Narmak neighborhood of Tehran. But similar gestures of protest are also seen in Sanandaj, in the province of origin of Amini, Kurdistan, and a man who burns a banner of the Iranian Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the southern city of Shiraz, according to what was reported by Iran International TVwhich is based in London.
Syria, women take to the streets and cut their hair against Mahsa Amini’s death in Iran
Jacobs’ support: “By the side of those who protest for freedom”
Today also the Olympic champion of the 100 meters Marcell Jacobs sided “with all the women and men protesting for their freedom,” he wrote on his Twitter profile, posting a photo of the protest with tags #IranProtests2022 e #IStandWithTheWomenOfIran.
The concern of the UN
The United Nations today asked the Iranian authorities “to guarantee the rights to a fair trial and to release the arbitrarily” arrested in the context of the protests that broke out in the country. “Many Iranians were killed, injured and detained during the protests,” said spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ravina Shamdasan in Geneva. “We are very concerned about the violent response of the security forces to the protests”, she added, evoking “the apparent unnecessary and disproportionate use of force against the demonstrators”. “Firearms must never be used to disperse a demonstration,” she recalled.
The spokesperson also expressed concern over “the comments of some leaders who defame the demonstrators and the interruption of communication services. “We are calling on the authorities to fully restore Internet access,” she said. Also due to the restrictions on telecommunications, the UN is unable to provide precise data on the precise number of victims. “Reports also indicate that hundreds of people have been arrested, including human rights defenders, lawyers, civil society activists and at least 18 journalists,” said the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Iran after Mahsa Amini and the great repression, here are the twenty journalists arrested who are shaking the regime
SILVIA STELLACCI
Demonstrations in Italy
In Italy today at the chorus of “We are all Mahsa Amini” over two hundred people took part in a sit-in protest in Genova against the ongoing repression in Iran. The demonstration was organized by the Genoese Iranian community with the support of trade unions, associations, politicians and local administrators from various camps. The demonstrators covered the area in front of the entrance to the Doge’s Palace with Persian carpets from that area, Iranian flags and banners with the photo of the young Mahsa. Dozens of signs were also hoisted with slogans such as “We are all Mahsa Amini”, “No to the Islamic republic” and “Woman, life, freedom” reported in three languages: Italian, English and Persian. But over a hundred people, mostly Iranian citizens, also met up with Venezia in the square of the Santa Lucia railway station, with signs and slogans for freedom in Iran and in memory of Mahsa Amini.