Iran is currently in its fourth week of protests which have engulfed the country since the death of Kurdish Mahsa (Zhina) Amini on September 16 while in the custody of the morality police in Tehran. The use of violence by Iranian security forces to disperse the demonstrators has been widely condemned by the international community.
On Thursday, the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights said that at least 201 people have been killed across Iran since protests began.
“For the women who courageously began to drop the veil and go before arms, for the young people and the men who are fighting for women's rights, for what is universal in this fight, France condemns the repressions perpetrated by the Iranian regime,” read a tweet from Macron on Wednesday.
Nasser Kanaani, the spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry, on Friday addressed Macron’s “interventionist” statements, saying the remarks of the French President are an encouragement for “violence and lawbreakers.”
“This is a clear hypocrisy and once again proves that human rights in the dictionary of many claimant governments in the West are nothing more than a toy and a tool to achieve political goals and interfere in the affairs of other countries,” Iranian state media (IRNA) cited Kanaani as saying, referring to recent threats made by French officials towards the country’s striking oil workers.
French oil refinery employees have held strikes for over two weeks, demanding a pay rise in light of the recent inflation waves.
Olivier Veran, spokesperson for the French government, on Tuesday said “the government calls for all the blockages to be lifted without delay, otherwise we will do what is necessary to lift them,” in an interview with France’s RTL radio network.
In late September, French police used tear gas against hundreds of people protesting in Paris in solidarity with the Iranian protesters, as they sought to approach Tehran’s embassy.
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