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Local human rights groups report further killings by Iranian security forces during overnight protests in Mahabad, where thousands took to the streets defying Iran’s threats on Wednesday after the end of a traditional 40-day mourning period for Iranian Kurdish woman Jîna Mahsa Amini, who lost her life in morality police custody in September.
Today has seen protesters taking control of key government institutions in Mahabad a city in the country’s Kurdistan province.
Human rights group Hengaw reported security forces killing a 35-year-old man, Ismail Mauludi, as they opened fire on crowds. Mauludi was buried on Thursday morning, the group said.
A large group has since surrounded a nearby police station, calling for revenge instead of mourning for Mauludi, Hengaw reported.
Earlier on Thursday, mourners at Mauludi’s funeral sang the Kurdish national anthem Ey Reqib by the grave site.
Iran’s Kurdistan province, known as Rojhilat (East) to Kurds, has been the focus of the huge wave of protests that have swept through the nation, sparked by the arrest and subsequent death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman for wearing her compulsory hijab ‘improperly’. Amini was visiting family in Tehran at the time of her death.
Iranian women have led the protests under the slogan, Woman Life Freedom – Jîn Jîyan Azadi in Kurdish and Zen Zendegi Azadi in Persian. The slogan that has become a rallying cry for women all around the world was developed within the Kurdish feminist movement, as part of what Kurds call Jineology, women’s science.
Various reports put the death toll since mid-September at over 240, with more than 12,500 people reportedly facing arrest. A Basij insider told reporters that 70 percent of the arrestees were under 20 years old.
