Iran Protests: As the protest movement inspired by Mahsa Amini’s murder in imprisonment entered its fifth week, violence broke out and a fire broke out at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison on Saturday night.
The northern Tehran jail, which also houses international detainees, is notorious for mistreating political prisoners. There have apparently been hundreds of people transferred there who were detained during the protests over Amini’s death.
Video footage posted on Twitter by the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights organization showed flames and a cloud of smoke rising into the night sky, along with the sound of what appeared to be gunfire.
An “explosion was heard” from the facility, according to the 1500tasvir social media feed that tracks protests and police misconduct, and “a fire is growing in Evin prison,” said on Twitter.
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In the backdrop of the footage, one could hear chants of “Death to the dictator,” one of the key catchphrases of a month-long protest movement that erupted upon Amini’s passing.
Amini, 22, passed away on September 16 after going into a coma three days earlier after being detained by Iran’s notorious morality police for allegedly breaking the country’s severe clothing code for women.
Senior security officials were quoted by Iranian state media as saying that “rioters” sparked a fire and that “troubles and confrontations took place on Saturday night” in the facility.
The IRNA news agency reported that at least eight people had been hurt but that “the situation is currently entirely under control.”
Families’ anxiety
Foreign inmates at the Evin jail include the French-Iranian professor Fariba Adelkhah and the US citizen Siamak Namazi, who, according to his family, was recently temporarily released before being returned to detention.
In response to news of the fire, Namazi’s family expressed their “great concern” and lack of communication in a statement to AFP that was provided by their attorney.
They pleaded with Iran’s officials to release him on a furlough and provide him “urgent” access to his family since “he plainly isn’t safe in Evin Prison.”
The sister of businessman Emad Shargi, a second US citizen detained at Evin, wrote on Twitter that his family was “numb with dread.”
According to reports, the Evin prison also houses reformist lawmaker Mostafa Tajzadeh and award-winning dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
Roham Alvandi, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, wrote on Twitter, “Shots are being fired while Evin burns.”
If, God forbid, political prisoners die, this will be a tragedy comparable to the Cinema Rex fire in Abadan in August 1978, which hastening the shah’s overthrow.
Despite the fact that no one has ever been definitively blamed, the inferno at the Cinema Rex, one of the deadliest terrorist acts in history prior to September 11, 2001, sparked demonstrations against the shah’s government.
On the eve of Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, an arson attack on a movie theatre that had its doors locked resulted in the deaths of 400 people.
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Mullahs must flee.
Despite internet outages, angry protesters took to the streets on Saturday around Iran.
The most significant wave of public protests to hit the nation in years has been led by young women.
In a video that went viral online, women without hijabs at a rally at Tehran’s Shariati Technical and Vocational College screamed, “Guns, tanks, fireworks; the mullahs must be lost.”
In video that AFP authenticated, dozens of jeering and whistling protestors attacked security personnel near a prominent roundabout in Hamedan, a city west of Tehran.
Videos posted on Twitter showed demonstrators flooding the streets of the northwest city of Ardabil despite what Internet traffic monitor NetBlocks dubbed a “significant disruption to internet service.”
Saqez, in the Kurdistan Province, where Amini is from, and Mahabad, in West Azerbaijan, both had shopkeeper strikes, according to 1500tasvir.
The catchphrase “The beginning of the end!” had been used to call for a massive turnout at protests on Saturday.
In reference to virtual private networks, which are used to get around internet censorship, activists proclaimed, “We have to be present in the squares because the best VPN these days is the street.”
‘Riots’
According to the Oslo-based organisation Iran Human Rights, at least 108 people have died in the Amini protests, and at least 93 more have perished in separate skirmishes in Zahedan, the capital of the southeast province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
Despite what Amnesty International has described as a “unrelenting savage response” that includes a “all-out attack on kid demonstrators” and resulted in the deaths of at least 23 minors, the disturbance has persisted.
According to a commander of the Revolutionary Guards, 850 people have been injured and three members of the militia’s Basij have been killed in Tehran since the “sedition” began.
United States, Britain, and Canada have all condemned the crackdown internationally and imposed penalties on Iran.
This week, member states of the European Union decided to impose further sanctions. The decision will be ratified on Monday in Luxembourg at a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
The supreme leader of Iran has accused the nation’s adversaries, such as the United States and Israel, of inciting riots.
The security forces of the ecclesiastical state have also begun a campaign of mass arrests of artists, dissidents, journalists, and athletes in response to the protests.
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