A prominent human rights group said on Friday that around 12,500 people have been arrested and more than 250 killed in the protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in Iran.
Amini was detained by the morality police in Iran for flouting the hijab rules and that night, she was declared dead after sustaining injuries to her head and her body. The death prompted protests all around the country with women burning their hijabs and even cutting their hair in public.
Also read | FATF removes Pakistan from ‘grey list’ after four years, slams Russia for war
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said that the death toll has exceeded 250 and urged the Iranian military to stop using “excessive force”. The Centre for Human Rights in Iran also said in their latest report that more than 3000 people have been arrested in the Tehran province alone.
In the past few days, human rights groups around the country accused the security forces of attacking students and journalists. On Thursday, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Maj Gen Hossein Salami, even said that they were close to “snuffing out the remaining protests” in Iran.
Also read | Giorgia Meloni to head new right-wing government, be Italy’s first woman Prime Minister
In response, The Writers Union of Iran issued an official statement. “Repression of people who protested with empty hands has been a daily occurrence in the last 40 years. But what happened to children and prisoners last week is one of the blackest pages in the record of the current government,” it stated.
The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on high-ranking officials and the morality police for the crackdown on the protestors in Iran.
