TEHRAN: Iran’s clerical rulers have stepped up suppression of persistent anti-government protests in the country’s Kurdish region, deploying troops and killing at least four demonstrators on Sunday (Nov 20), social media posts and rights groups said.
Nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September in the custody of morality police, have been at their most intense in the areas where the majority of Iran’s 10 million Kurds live.
Videos on social media, unverifiable by Reuters, showed a convoy of military vehicles with heavily armed troops, purportedly in the western city of Mahabad. The sounds of heavy weaponry could be heard in several other videos.
The Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said military helicopters carried members of the widely feared Revolutionary Guards to quell the protests in the Sunni-dominated Kurdish city of Mahabad.
In a statement, carried by state media, the Guards confirmed “strengthening” their forces in the northwestern Kurdish region to confront “terrorist separatist groups” in the area.
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“The security of the people is our red line … and dealing decisively with terrorists is our mandate,” the statement said.
Iranian authorities, who have blamed Amini s death on pre-existing medical conditions, say the unrest has been fomented by foreign adversaries and accuse armed separatists of perpetrating violence.
Prominent Sunni cleric Molavi Abdolhamid, a powerful dissenting voice in the Shi ite-ruled Islamic Republic, called on security forces to refrain from shooting at people in Mahabad.
“Disturbing news is emerging from the Kurdish areas, especially from Mahabad … pressure and crackdown will lead to further dissatisfaction,” Abdolhamid tweeted.
