Deadly clashes between protesters and security forces erupted in Iran on Sunday, according to civil rights groups and local media, as demonstrations first sparked by anger over the rising cost of living entered a second week.
At least 12 people, including members of the security forces, have been killed since the protests kicked off with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on December 28, according to a count based on official reports.
One activist group, United4Mahsa, said a teenage protester, Taha Safari, was killed in the city of Marvdasht, after security services opened fire.
Protestors in Fasa, southern Iran, on December 31
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President Trump warned that Iran would get “hit very hard” if it began “killing people like they have in the past”. Speaking on Air Force One on Sunday, just days after Tehran’s ally Nicolás Maduro was captured by US forces in Venezuela, Trump added: “We’re watching it very closely.”
Overnight on Saturday, protests featuring slogans criticising the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities were reported in Tehran, Shiraz, in the south of the country, and in areas of western Iran where the movement has been concentrated, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency monitor.
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The demonstrations are the most significant in Iran since the movement in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women, close to three years ago.
“The way it looks now, it smells different [from previous protests], this time is different,” Ali, a DJ heralded as the godfather of techno in Iran and known as AliPink, said. “The north of Tehran kids are affluent and despite not being affected by this, we have all been hit and victims somehow,” he said, calling on others to “come forward and finish the job so we can get out of this dire situation”.
Ali, also known as AliPink
Ali, like so many others in Iran, has paid a heavy price for his activities — organising parties and playing techno music has led to him being arrested and jailed multiple times.
A woman, aged 60 and living on her own, said she has cut back on even the most basic necessities including hygiene products, clothing and unnecessary travel. “Over the past five or six days, the situation has been anything but stable, and the upward trend in prices continues. Anything you buy today is encountered at a completely different price the next day. This level of fluctuation and instability has reached the point where it practically removes any ability to plan,” the woman, who withheld her name for fear of repercussions, said.
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She added that many shops had remained closed. “Apart from grocery stores and sellers of basic and essential items, other businesses are reluctant to trade and are waiting for prices to become clearer.”
Women’s rights have been trampled since the onslaught of the revolution in 1979. “Over the past 50 years we have not truly lived,” she said. “It has been a kind of daily survival in which we gave up our most basic rights, shaped by a patriarchal society and the religious system that developed in Iran over these years. Women, whose rights were already difficult to obtain before, experienced an even greater decline during this period.”
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Women and students joined the latest protests in its earliest hours. Younger women have been left “without hope for the future”, the woman explained, largely unemployed and without even “the most basic right to life”.
“They lacked the simple things every human being wants: social interaction, freedom of movement, going out, and relationships, and as a result they also had no source of income,” she added. The woman added that Tehran has become more crowded over the past few days, with a “noticeable presence of police forces, which had clearly increased”.