Iranian Group Demands Justice For Victims Of 2019 Protests

Nearly 100 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the Sunni city of Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, during the Bloody Friday tragedy on September 30, 2022, when they came out for peaceful anti-government protests.

On the eve of Mowlavi Abdolhamid's weekly Friday sermon, security and law enforcement forces were deployed in some crossings of Sistan-Baluchistan province, human rights sources reported.

Baluch Activists Campaign group published videos of "armored bulletproof military vehicles” on the streets of Zahedan and reported snipers were stationed on a mountain near the city’s main Makki Mosque since Friday morning.

Besides Zahedan, Khash city was also experiencing a strong security and military presence, with armored vehicles deployed in the city to deal with any potential gatherings of citizens.

While there has not been a trial for the perpetrators of the killings of protesters, several Baloch protesters accused of attacking security forces and law enforcement have been executed.

“There are reports that some [government agents] go to the families of victims of Bloody Friday and urge them to accept ‘blood money’. The country's customs and current law prohibit this,” said Iran’s top Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid.

As per Iran's Islamic Penal Code, a person who has committed murder can avoid the death penalty if the victim's family forgives him. In that case, they may be sentenced to prison and be required to pay "blood money" to the next of kin.

The southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan is among the most economically deprived parts of Iran. The province has a large Baluch population, mostly Sunnis. They have historically been among Iran's most persecuted minorities, with the highest execution rate.

“It is surprising that despite the leader's order to punish the perpetrators and leaders of this crime, it has not been followed. Our belief until now was that the leader's orders are valid, and at least those who eat the bread of sovereignty and government will follow it,” Abdolhamid said during his Friday sermon.

“It gives comfort to the families of the martyrs to know that those who committed this crime will be punished,” he continued.

The Bloody Friday protests began with worshippers gathering after a police commander sexually assaulted a young Baluch girl. The uprising became one of the bloodiest days of the uprising following Mahsa Amini's death in morality police custody.

A week-round protest has been taking place in this Sunni-majority city since then, following sermons delivered by the city's Friday prayer leader Mowlavi Abdolhamid.

In his speech on Friday, Mowlavi Abdolhamid once again asked the Islamic Republic to end discrimination and consider "national interests".

Numerous hijab officers can be seen crowded into a subway passageway in Tehran's Enghelab station, according to social media images posted Friday. The situation has been described as the "horror tunnel" for women.

The Tehran newspaper Farhikhtegan verified the increased presence of hijab enforcers on Thursday in other busy metro stations.

The newspaper highlighted that the Security Police (FARAJA) was assisting the hijab enforcers by using their cameras to spot and identify women without headscarves.

“There is an increase of FARAJA forces in the subway stations, especially in front of the ticket gates and next to the hijab guards, and when you leave the gate, a young man with a small camera will appear in front of you to take your picture,” Farhikhtegan wrote.

Over the past week, reports on social media have increased about the government's more aggressive attempts to impose and monitor hijab in the subway.

"Recording images of passersby violates people's right to privacy," added Farhikhtegan in its article.

The hijab officers in the subways have become extremely strict after Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, 22, died in hijab police custody in September 2022, sparking the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests.

In May, Tehran mayor Alireza Zakani announced that the city has implemented a uniformed security unit to prevent women from entering the metro ticket gates unveiled.

There was also a report in August that Tehran municipality would send 400 personnel to enforce hijab laws at subway stations in the capital.

The increased presence of hijab police also evokes the memory of Armita Geravand, 16, who in October died after an encounter with Tehran's hijab police.

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi on Wednesday claimed that the government of President Ebrahim Raisi had no role in disqualifying candidates, but contradicting himself he added “except in the case of the sitting lawmakers who have been disqualified”. He insisted that the disqualifications had nothing to do with these lawmakers’ criticism of the government. 

Some of the affected candidates have complained that their disqualification was arbitrary and blamed ultra-hardliners who have strong influence in President Ebrahim Raisi’s administration and his interior ministry for “filtering” those who have registered.

Elections during the Islamic Republic have never been democratic for many reasons, but particularly for the fact that only candidates who agree with the principle of a religious state and clerical rule were allowed to run. However, increasingly requirements have become tighter, and only those loyal to hardliners have been able to compete.

The ministry’s executive boards conduct an initial screening -- based on information provided by the ministry of intelligence, the judiciary, police, and the National Organization for Civil Registration -- before major ideological vetting by the Constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council.

Most reformist parties and groups, as well as many among moderate conservatives, have not shown any interest in the elections given extensive vetting in 2020 elections which excluded them from the parliament and resulted in domination by ultra-hardliners.

The public has also been so indifferent that some regime insiders say turnout may be as low as 15 percent. The parliamentary elections are scheduled for March 1, and despite worsening economic conditions and 50 percent annual inflation, the public does not see a chance of any improvement. They believe that the same elites committed to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s policies will cruise to victory.

In a rare political commentary Tuesday, Nour News, a news website affiliated to the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), warned about extreme lack of public interest in the elections and the negative role played by a “certain political group”, presumably the ultra-hardliner Paydari Front, to it.

The Paydari Front who have gained huge influence in Raisi’s government are believed to be behind a “political purification plan” that aims to purge all loyalists outside their own group from positions of power.

The Nour News commentary said disqualification of candidates by the interior ministry’s executive boards did not indicate a “flexible and open-minded approach” on their part which can contribute to a drop in voter turnout, while stressing the importance of high participation in boosting the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic.

Any behavior or approach that increases “the rate of real participation of citizens” in the elections will boost the regime’s legitimacy and its national authority while any step taken in the opposite direction will weaken it, Nour News, wrote.

Admitting that there is no marked interest in the upcoming elections yet, Nour News said the supremacy of those who oppose participation in the elections over those who promote high participation is “a worrying fact that cannot be ignored.”

Ultra-hardliners of the Paydari Front blamed former national security chief Ali Shamkhani for not crushing last year’s protests in the bud and even accused him of complicity with former reformist President Mohammad Khatami under whom he served as defense minister between 1997 and 2005.

Voter turnout in the 2020 parliamentary elections officially dropped to 42.57%, the lowest since the first elections held in 1979, only two months after the Islamic Revolution, in which 52.14 percent of those eligible to vote had taken part. Some critics say that even the official turnout numbers are exaggerated, and far fewer people cast ballots.

The Guardian Council disqualified even those reformist candidates who were closer to conservatives than to most other reformists, ensuring that many seats went to ultraconservatives and hardliners without any challenge from reformist rivals.

The highest participation rate was registered in 2001, during the presidency of the reformist Mohammad Khatami, when 67 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. This was one of the rare occasions when the Guardian Council allowed candidates from across the political spectrum to run. Reformists gained an overwhelming majority in the 2001 elections.

Informed sources in the Kurdistan region of Iraq told Iran International's reporter that Rahmati was targeted in front of his house in Erbil by a three-member armed team, and he was hit by two bullets. The security forces of the Kurdistan region of Iraq have not yet been able to arrest the attackers and are investigating the incident.

Rahmati has represented several families in recent years whose members were victims of assassinations orchestrated by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Kurdistan Region.

According to information received by Iran International in previous years, he had been responsible for handling the case of Qadir Qadiri, a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, who was assassinated in a village in Sulaymaniyah province by three agents of the Islamic Republic in March 2018.

In an exclusive interview with Iran International in 2020, Rahmati said, "Those accused of Qadiri's assassination have confessed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard planned the assassination and promised to pay them."

The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran condemned the malicious intent towards the life of this lawyer in a statement and announced that Sohrab Rahmati had been responsible for important cases.

The Democratic Party also emphasized that this lawyer has been repeatedly targeted for assassination by the Islamic Republic. In the past 11 months alone, three members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran have been assassinated in the Kurdistan region of Iraq by the Islamic Republic.

Families of victims and ordinary people mark the 4th anniversary of the killing of at least 1,500 mostly young protesters in less than five days in November 2019.

Photos of fallen protesters are circulating widely on social media, with users posting collages of hundreds of images of young men and women who lost their lives in one of Iran's bloodiest crackdowns on dissent under the Islamic rule.

Days of intense nationwide protests, triggered by a sudden government decision to raise fuel prices, started on November 14, 2019, and marked the beginning of prolonged periods of dissent. What made the people angry was not simply a price rise. It was the painful humiliation they felt as the government did not bother to let them know in advance about the hike. In addition, when the media reported about a possible price rise, government officials denied any such plans.

The announcement came at midnight, presumably to minimize public shock. However, the morning revealed an even greater shock, as prices had tripled overnight. Iranians, anticipating a ripple effect on other prices, took to the streets in unprecedented numbers.

As many, including Iranian journalist Shahed Alvai have observed, "the crackdown was even more unprecedented. Protests took place in 104 Iranian cities in 29 provinces, and they were quickly turned into a massive anti-regime movement. Protesters ruled out reconciliation with the government and took to the streets in a scale that terrified the government."

The Revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary forces, the Basij, that was deployed to suppress the demonstrations labeled the 2019 protests as "An all-out war against the regime and the Islamic revolution." The regime's response was ruthless massacre, a method it continued to employ in subsequent nationwide protests, including those sparked by public anger with the Morality Police, after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest for “improper hijab” in September 2022.

During the 2019 protests in the month of Aban on the Iranian calendar (October 22 to November 21), protesters, for the first time, chanted slogans against the entire regime: "We do not want the reformists and conservatives. That is all over!" They were referring to two insider factions ruling Iran for three decades. The government recognized the severity of the threat, leading to a violent crackdown on dissent, and in the words of Iranian dissidents, "Aban continued."

Four years later, references to Aban are abundant. People are still remembering and mourning the fallen protesters who were often shot at point blank range as documented by International human rights organizations. The victims' families are still being harassed by security forces and sometimes imprisoned for several years.

In subsequent protests, the government, mindful of the international backlash to the large number of protester deaths, took pride in claiming fewer casualties in 2022. However, shotguns replaced rifles, resulting in many being wounded or blinded, and a higher number ended up in jail.

What the ruling elite did not learn was addressing the root cause of dissent: Deteriorating economic conditions in 2019 and serious political issues including demands for civil liberties and respect for human rights in 2022. Only after the nationwide protests in 2022 did government officials express a willingness to engage in dialogue with the people. However, once the streets calmed, they abandoned the call for reconciliation, adopting a rude and humiliating tone toward Iranians, particularly women, teachers, university professors, workers, and pensioners, on a daily basis.

Reformist commentator Abbas Abdi reminded the government in a commentary in Etemad newspaper that, during the 2022 protests, they used to be humble and call for dialogue with protesters. However, as soon as they believed the protests were behind them, they returned to their factory settings, speaking arrogantly.

According to Abdi, authorities interviewed 66 scholars, including himself, to understand the events and reasons behind the protests. However, he criticized the government's reluctance, stating, “As far as they are concerned, there was a security problem, and the security forces sorted it out." Abdi acknowledged that "The way the government is handling last year's protests has not changed."

Despite government assertions, numerous social media posts by political activists, often writing under an alias, insist that the Bloody Aban is not over. As Alavi pointed out, "The names, memories, and pictures of Aban 2019 live on as family members of fallen protesters keep them alive. Eyewitnesses are in prisons, and family members have not stopped seeking justice." Mahboubeh Ramezani, the mother of Pejman Gholipour, one of the young men killed in November 2019, has told the government: "You know that Aban has destroyed you and that Aban still goes on."