Iranian schoolgirls have dared to remove their headscarves and have been organizing rallies for the past few days to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, defying the deadly crackdown on protests that have been taking place for nearly three weeks in Iran.
The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died on September 16, three days after she was arrested by the morality police for violating the Islamic Republic's strict dress code, which notably requires women to wear the veil.
Anger erupted during his burial and spread across the country.
The protests have become the largest in Iran since those in 2019 against rising gasoline prices.
At least 92 dead
At least 92 people have been killed since September 16, according to the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights, while authorities put the death toll at around 60, including 12 members of the security forces.
More than a thousand people have been arrested and more than 620 released in Tehran province alone, according to authorities.
Students gathered last weekend before being confronted by riot police who cornered them in an underground car park at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran before arresting them.
Since then, schoolgirls across the country have taken over, adopting a variety of tactics, including removing their veils and shouting anti-conservative slogans.
In a video verified by AFP, young girls, their heads unveiled, chant
"Death to the dictator"
, in reference to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Monday in a school in Karaj, west of Tehran.
Another group of girls chants
“Woman, life, freedom”
while parading in a street.
“These are truly extraordinary scenes.
If these demonstrations are to lead to anything, it will be thanks to the schoolgirls,”
declared Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, of the information and analysis site Bourse&Bazaar.
Other videos posted online show schoolgirls leaving classrooms to march through various locations around the city in flash protests to avoid detection.
AFP does
Read alsoIran: anger against the veil ignites youth
But Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri admitted on Wednesday that young people were involved in the protests, denouncing the influence of social networks.
"The fact that 16-year-olds are present in these events is caused by social networks, they are trapped
," he said, quoted by the ISNA agency.
Education Minister Yousef Nouri, quoted by the IRNA agency, told him that
“the enemy's attacks were targeting universities as well as the worlds of science and education”
.
Since the beginning of the protest, the Iranian regime has intensified its repression by arresting notorious supporters of the movement and imposing severe restrictions on access to social networks.
"Cruel disregard for life"
On Wednesday, the NGO Human Rights Watch said it had verified 16 videos posted on social media, which it said showed
"police and other security forces using excessive and lethal force against protesters"
in Tehran and other cities.
'other cities.
These images show the police
"using firearms, such as handguns or Kalashnikov-type assault rifles
," HRW said in a statement.
This crackdown
"testifies to a concerted action by the government to crush dissent in a cruel disregard for life"
, adds a researcher from the NGO, Tara Sepehri Far, quoted in the press release.
Read alsoIran: power opts for repression against demonstrators
Meanwhile, Iranian judicial authorities on Wednesday denied any link between the death of a teenage girl and the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
Social networks had reported during the day that the teenager Nika Shahkarami had been killed by the security forces during the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, according to Iran Human Rights, at least 63 people were killed last week in Zahedan, in southeastern Iran, a predominantly Shia country, as protests sparked by accusations that a leader of local police had raped a 15-year-old girl from the Sunni Baloch minority.
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