A day of protests and violence in Iran. The imam of a Shiite mosque in the city of Zahedan, capital of the southern province of Sistan and Baluchistan with a Sunni majority, was shot dead, according to the official Irna news agency.
“A special task force was set up to identify and arrest the perpetrators,” said Sistan-Baluchistan Province Police Commander Ahmad Taheri. The dead cleric is said to be Sajjad Shahraki, imam of the Mualy Mutaqian mosque.
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by Gabriella Colarusso
Zahedan was the scene of one of the bloodiest days since the beginning of the protests on 22 September after the death of Mahsa Amini in the hands of the so-called moral police. Amnesty International said security forces killed at least 66 people on 30 September during a demonstration in front of the Zahedan mosque.
City authorities fired the police chief and the head of a police station after the incident. Zahedan’s repression was also criticized by a senior Sunni cleric who claimed that senior officials, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were responsible “before God”.
Zahedan, near Iran’s southeastern border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to an estimated 2 million minority of Baloch people who have suffered discrimination and repression for decades, according to rights groups humans.
The Sistan-Baluchistan region around Zahedan is one of the poorest in the country and has been a hotbed of tension.
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by Gabriella Colarusso
Protests in Karaj on the day of remembrance of Hadis Najafi
Zahedan’s attack comes on a new day of protests in Iran. The ceremonies to remember the victims of repression – who are at least 288 according to human rights organizations – have turned into new protests and clashes. The security forces opened fire on the crowd that had gathered in Karaj to celebrate the end of 40 days of mourning (in Farsi ‘chehelom’) for the young Hadis Najafi, who was shot dead last month during the anti-government protests in Tehran.
Furthermore, according to the state media, in the “clashes” in Karaj a basij – the paramilitary militia often used to suppress demonstrations – was killed and other officers were injured. The authorities had closed the Behesht-e Sakineh cemetery (about fifty kilometers west of the capital) where the girl is buried and blocked the roads to prevent people from reaching the grave of one of the victims – a symbol of the repression carried out by the authorities to quell the vast protests against the Islamic Republic.
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by the foreign editorial staff
Despite the checkpoints, thousands of people managed to converge near the cemetery, along a highway, to the sound of anti-government slogans and against Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei. The agents responded by throwing tear gas and firing live bullets, according to witnesses quoted by the Bbc. The Iranian agency Fars, close to the pasdaran, reported the killing of a basiji and the wounding of at least three policemen in the “clashes”. Plainclothes officers also attacked demonstrators with machetes, again according to witnesses on the spot.
Hadis Najafi was a 22-year-old TikToker. In a video recorded on her mobile phone of her as she was on her way to a demonstration in Karaj on 21 September, she said: “I hope that in a few years, when I look back, I will be happy that everything has changed for the better”. Her family reported that Hadis was shot dead by security forces nearly an hour after that video. Authorities, as in many other similar cases, asked the father to say that her daughter had died of a heart attack.