ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian security forces killed another minor on Sunday night after they opened fire on protesters with live ammunition in the country’s western Kurdish areas (Rojhelat), which have become the leaders of the protests that have engulfed Iran for the past seven weeks.
“We are the people of the Middle East, some of us will die in war, some in prison, some in the street, others drown in the sea,” Komar Daroftadeh, the 16-year-old who was shot dead in the Kurdish city of Piranshahr posted on his Instagram before meeting his fateful end. “Even the rising mountains avenge their loneliness on us, because weare here to die.”
Daroftadah is one of at least three dozen children killed by the security forces across Iran as the authorities in Tehran falsely claim that no live ammunition has been used by the security forces.
Last week the UN Special Rapporteur for Iran Javaid Rehman urged the international community and “to take concrete actions” and address “impunity for rights violations” in the country.
Iran has been engulfed in turmoil for the past seven weeks since the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini while in the custody of Tehran’s morality police on September 16, igniting an unprecedented nationwide protest movement that has brought Iranians from all corners together to call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime.
The Kurdish population in the west and northwest of the country scattered in the provinces of Kurdistan, Western Azerbijan, Ilam and Kermanshah have become the driving force of the protests, taking to the streets night after night.
The security forces have used heavy handed measures against the Kurdish population by detaining thousands of activists, students, ordinary citizens, and protesters while subjecting some of them to savage torture. At least 40 protesters have been killed in the Kurdish areas with over a thousand protesters wounded, some of whom have refrained from going to medical facilities for fear of arrest and have been treated at home instead.
On Saturday, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Hossein Salami threatened the protesters and announced the end of the movement - which he described as “riots.”
However, protesters in dozens of universities and cities across the country took to the streets, defying the security forces and burning tires in the streets while chanting “death to dictator” and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Hundreds of students have been barred from attending university and students from the pro-government militia in Tehran attacked students with teargas and pistols on Sunday.
In the Baluchi areas, another flashpoint in southeast Iran, there were calls for medical professionals to attend to the main mosque in Zahedan city to treat protesters who were wounded with live ammunition on Friday by the security forces.
As the brutality of the security forces shows no sign of abetting, the international pressure appears to be growing on Tehran as the number of dead protesters increases and the top security officials including the supreme leader, the ultimate decision maker, call for a decisive crackdown to end the protest movement.
New Zealand suspended a four year program on human rights with Tehran on Monday. “This decision sends a strong signal that bilateral approaches on human rights are no longer tenable with Iran, when they are denying basic human rights and violently suppressing protests of those who stand up to them,” the country’s Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said.
