During “Bloody Friday in Zahedan”, the security forces “bloodly repressed” a demonstration that broke out after prayers, say several NGOs, according to which the images of gunshot wounds, Tehran’s policy of discrimination and repression in the region is revealing.
Where did the clashes take place?
The clashes took place in Zahedan, the main city in the province of Sistan Baluchistan, in the southeast and near the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Sistan Balochistan is one of the poorest regions and home to the Baluchi minority, almost all of whom adhere to Sunni Islam and not to Iran’s dominant Shiism.
Militants and NGOs have long lamented that the region suffers from discrimination by the Shia religious establishment, with a disproportionate number of Baluchis killed in clashes with law enforcement each year or convicted and executed.
Amnesty International estimates that, in 2021, at least 19% of all those sentenced to death were members of the “Baluchi ethnic minority, which represents 5% of the Iranian population as a whole”.
What is the origin of the manifestations?
Iran has been shaken for more than two weeks by a wave of protests across the country following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman of Kurdish origin, who died three days after her arrest for violating the strict dress code of the Islamic Republic, which requires women to wear the veil.