Monday, October 03, 2022

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Canada imposes fresh sanctions on Iran citing death of Mahsa Amini


People protest in solidarity with Iranian women, in Toronto

Mon, October 3, 2022
By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -Canada imposed fresh sanctions on Iran on Monday for alleged human rights violations, including the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from Iranian Kurdistan who died while in custody of Iran's "morality police," the Canadian government said.

"These sanctions are in response to gross human rights violations that have been committed in Iran, including its systematic persecution of women and in particular, the egregious actions committed by Iran's so-called 'Morality Police,' which led to the death of Mahsa Amini while under their custody," the Canadian government said in a statement.

These new measures built on Canada's existing sanctions against Iran and listed 25 individuals and nine entities, including officials in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its ministry of intelligence and security, the Canadian government said.

Iran's minister of intelligence, Esmail Khatib, the country's state-run Press TV and its 'Morality Police,' which enforce the Islamic Republic's strict dress code, were also sanctioned by Canada.

"The continued and systemic persecution of Iranian women must stop," Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said. "Canada applauds the courage and actions of Iranians and will stand by them as they fight for their rights and dignity."

Amini was arrested on Sept. 13 in Tehran for "unsuitable attire" by the morality police. She died three days later in hospital after falling into a coma.

Amini's family says she was beaten to death in custody. Iran's police authorities deny those allegations and say Amini died of a heart attack.

Her death sparked huge protests in Iran and by Iranians in other parts of the world. The unrest has spiraled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran's authorities in years.

Prior to Monday's measures, Canada had imposed sanctions on a total of 41 Iranian individuals and 161 Iranian entities, the Canadian government said.

In 2012, Canada designated Iran as a "supporter of terrorism."

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler)

"Shooting heard" as Iran's anti-protest crackdown hits top university

CBSNews
Mon, October 3, 2022 

Paris — Iranian students have clashed with security forces at a top Tehran university amid the wave of unrest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, state media and rights groups said Monday. Kurdish Iranian Amini, 22, was pronounced dead on September 16, days after she was detained for allegedly breaching rules forcing women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes, sparking Iran's biggest wave of protests in almost three years.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, finally broke his silence on the chaos in his country Monday, telling a group of police cadets that the U.S. and Israel were behind the "rioting" in Iran. Khamenei called Amini's death "a sad incident" that "left us heartbroken," but condemned the protests as a "planned" foreign plot to destabilize the country.

A photo released by the office of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, center, reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony at the police academy in Tehran, Iran, October 3, 2022. / Credit: Handout/Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP

"This rioting was planned," he told cadets gathered in Tehran. "I say clearly that these riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and their employees... Such actions are not normal, are unnatural."

Outside rights groups say more than 80 people have been killed since Iran's security forces started cracking down on the protests, with some members of the forces among the dead.

Concern grew over violence at Sharif University of Technology overnight where, local media reported, riot police confronted hundreds of students, using tear gas and paintballs and carrying weapons that shoot non-lethal steel pellets.


An image from cell phone video obtained by the Reuters news agency purportedly shows Iranian security forces and protesters on a street in front of Tehran's Sharif University of Technology during clashes amid nationwide protests, October 3, 2022. / Credit: REUTERS/UGC

"Woman, life, liberty," students shouted, as well as "students prefer death to humiliation", the Iranian Mehr news agency reported, adding that the country's science minister later came to speak to the students in an effort to calm the situation.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights posted video apparently showing Iranian police on motorcycles pursuing running students in an underground car park and, in a separate clip, taking away detainees whose heads were covered in black cloth bags.

In other video, which could not be independently verified, shooting and screaming can be heard as large numbers of people run down a street at night.

"Security forces have attacked Sharif University in Tehran tonight. Shooting can be heard," IHR said in a Twitter message Sunday. In another video clip, a crowd of people can be heard chanting: "Don't be afraid! Don't be afraid! We are all together!" IHR said the video was taken at Shariati metro station in the capital Tehran on Sunday. The New York-based group Center for Human Rights in Iran said it was "extremely concerned by videos coming out of Sharif University and Tehran today showing violent repression of protests + detainees being hauled away with their heads completely covered in fabric." Mehr news agency said that "Sharif University of Technology announced that due to recent events and the need to protect students ... all classes will be held virtually from Monday." Since the unrest started on September 16, dozens of protesters have been killed and more than a thousand arrested. Members of the security forces have been among those killed.

As CBS News correspondent Roxana Saberi reported over the weekend, the anti-government protests have entered their third week despite severe internet restrictions and a heavy-handed crackdown by Iran's security forces aimed at quashing the upheaval.

What are the protests all about?

And while Iranian women have taken part in other nationwide protests, Saberi said this time, the spark for the unrest was a woman's death — and it was a female journalist — Niloufar Hamedi of the Shargh daily, who broke the story.

Hamedi was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison for her work. She is one of at least 19 journalists, including seven women, who have been detained across the country since the protests began, according to Reporters Without Borders. The Center for Human Rights in Iran puts the figure at 25 or higher.

"This is the first time that women in a large number, standing shoulder to shoulder with men, are burning their headscarves," Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist who fled Iran in 2009 and is now based in New York, noted told CBS News.

The headscarf or hijab "is the main pillar of the Islamic Republic," said Alinejad, who runs an online campaign called "My Stealthy Freedom" that shares images of women and girls in Iran flouting the hijab rules.

She said Iranian women "strongly believe that by burning headscarves, they're actually shaking the regime."

In the decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Saberi said women were commonly seen on the streets of Iran dressed in both the hijab and in the latest Western fashions. But soon after the revolution, the new Islamic regime ruled that women and girls from a young age had to cover their hair and bodies in public. Hardliners proclaimed the hijab would protect women's honor, but for many protesters, it has remained a powerful symbol of oppression.

The women who've been demonstrating want to have the choice of whether or not to wear the hijab, according to Azadeh Pourzand, co-founder of the US-based Siamak Pourzand Foundation, promoting the freedom of expression in Iran.

"It's about essentially women feeling humiliated and women feeling forced to do something that they may or may not want to do," said Pourzand, who is also a PhD researcher at the University of London focusing on women's activism in Iran.


People stage a demonstration to protest the death of a 22-year-old woman under custody of the morality police, in Tehran, Iran, September 21, 2022. 
/ Credit: Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty

While Iranian women have pushed for legal reforms for years, very little has been achieved, she said. Women are present in society, particularly in higher education, but family and employment laws remain deeply discriminatory toward women, as do norms and practices, she said.

Pourzand said the ongoing protests have united Iranians across different ages, ethnicities and cities. Demonstrators are calling not only for women's rights, but also protesting against political repression more broadly, and mismanagement and corruption that have left Iran isolated globally, and its economy flailing.


Student protesters in Tehran, Iran ‘trapped on campus and shot at’ during clashes

Furvah Shah
Mon, October 3, 2022 

A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini (via REUTERS)

Students at a university in TehranIran were reportedly targeted by police with gunshots and trapped on campus, according to social media.

A number of students at the prestigious Sharif University of Technology are said to have clashed with police on Sunday, during ongoing anti-government protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

Ms Amini – also known by her Kurdish-heritage name, Jina Amini – died on September 16 after being detained by so-called ‘morality police’ for allegedly breaking the country’s strict dress code during a visit to the capital city.

Officials say Ms Amini suffered from sudden heart failure, but her family and protesters allege she was beaten by police while in custody causing her to fall into a coma and later die.

Since her death, protests have erupted in Iran and around the world.

On Sunday, social and state media reports say protesting students at Sharif University clashed with police.

On Twitter, users posted several videos showing the university surrounded by riot police and students taking cover on campus from what sounds to be tear gas and gun shots.

Another video, posted by activist Twitter account @1500tasvir, showed security forces chasing students trapped in the university’s underground parking. The account, which has over 172,000 followers, said dozens of students had been arrested.

Demonstrations were held in several cities on Sunday such as Tehran, Yazd, Kermanshah, Sanandaj, Shiraz and Mashhad as protests in the country continue into their 17th consecutive day.

At least 133 people have been killed during the protests in Iran, according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, including more than 40 people it said died in clashes last week in Zahedan, capital of the south-eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.

Iranian authorities have not given a death toll, but state media report at least 41 people have died, including members of security force’s who they say were attacked by “rioters and thugs backed by foreign foes”.


Germany, others in EU plan Iran sanctions over protests clampdown -source


Demonstration in solidarity with Iranian anti-government protesters in Madrid

Mon, October 3, 2022 

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic have submitted 16 proposals for new European Union sanctions against Iran for its violent crackdown on protests over women's rights, a German foreign ministry source said on Monday.

The proposed measures would target people and institutions primarily responsible for the clampdown on nationwide protests that were ignited by the death in policy custody of a young woman, the source added.

Those proposing the sanctions are aiming for the EU foreign ministers to decide on them at their meeting on Oct. 17, with no resistance expected from the members of the bloc, Spiegel magazine, which reported the news first, said.

"We are now working flat out to implement these proposals," the source said.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday that Iran's suppression of protests was "an expression of sheer fear of education and the power of freedom" and promised sanctions.

"It is also difficult to bear that our foreign policy options are limited. But we can amplify their voice, create publicity, bring charges and sanction. And that we are doing," Baerbock tweeted.

The anti-government protests, which began at 22-year-old Mahsa Amini's funeral on Sept. 17 in the Kurdish town of Saqez, have spiralled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran's authorities in years, with many calling for the end of more than four decades of Islamic clerical rule.

Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based group, has said more than 100 people have been killed. Iranian authorities have not given a death toll, while saying many members of the security forces have been killed by "rioters and thugs backed by foreign foes".

Last week state television said 41 people had died, including members of the security forces.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa and Alexander Ratz; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich)



Iran protests: Supreme leader blames unrest on US and Israel

David Gritten - BBC News
Mon, October 3, 2022 

Women have been at the forefront of the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini

Iran's supreme leader has blamed the US and Israel for the anti-government protests sweeping the country, in his first public comments on the unrest.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "riots" had been "engineered" by Iran's arch-enemies and their allies, and alleged that Qurans had been burned.

He also called on security forces to be ready to deal with further unrest.

The protests - the biggest challenge to his rule for a decade - were sparked by the death in custody of a woman.

Mahsa Amini, 22, fell into a coma hours after being detained by morality police on 13 September in Tehran for allegedly breaking the strict law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf. She died three days later.

Her family has alleged that officers beat her head with a baton and banged her head against one of their vehicles. The police have said there is no evidence of any mistreatment and that she suffered "sudden heart failure".

Women have led the protests that began after Ms Amini's funeral, waving their headscarves in the air or setting them on fire to chants of "Woman, life, freedom" and "Death to the dictator" - a reference to Ayatollah Khamenei.


Addressing a graduation ceremony of police and armed forces cadets on Monday, the supreme leader said Ms Amini's death "broke our hearts".

"But what is not normal is that some people, without proof or an investigation, have made the streets dangerous, burned the Quran, removed hijabs from veiled women and set fire to mosques and cars," he added, without mentioning any specific incidents.

The ayatollah, who has the final say on all state matters, asserted that foreign powers had planned "rioting" because they could not tolerate Iran "attaining strength in all spheres".

"I say clearly that these riots and the insecurity were engineered by America and the occupying, false Zionist regime [Israel], as well as their paid agents, with the help of some traitorous Iranians abroad."

He also gave his full backing to the security forces, saying that they had faced "injustice" during the unrest.

Iran Human Rights, a Norway-based group, said on Sunday that at least 133 people had been killed by security forces so far. They include 41 protesters whom ethnic Baluch activists said had died in clashes in Zahedan on Friday.

State media have reported that more than 40 people have been killed, including security personnel.


Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (2nd right) gave his full backing to the security forces, saying they had faced "injustice"

Ayatollah Khamenei's comments came a day after security forces violently cracked down on a protest by students at Iran's most prestigious science and engineering university, reportedly arresting dozens.

The BBC's Kasra Naji says the gunfire heard around the campus of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran on Sunday night spread fear among many Iranians that authorities had decided to make an example of the students.

Security forces tried to the enter the campus, but the students drove them back and closed all the entrance gates.

But, our correspondent adds, a siege developed and the students who tried to leave through an adjacent car park were picked up one by one and beaten, blindfolded and taken away.



In one video posted on social media, a large number of people are seen running inside a car park while being pursued by men on motorbikes.

The siege was lifted later in the night following the intervention of professors and a government minister.

On Monday, students at the university announced that they would not go back to classes until all of their fellow students had been released from detention. The university meanwhile said it had moved classes online, citing "the need to protect students".

Protests were also reported at other universities in Tehran and elsewhere in the country, including Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz and Kermanshah.

In Karaj and Shiraz, schoolgirls were filmed waving their headscarves in the air and chanting "death to the dictator".

Iran's supreme leader breaks silence on protests, blames US



In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony accompanied by commanders of the armed forces, at the police academy in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. Khamenei responded publicly on Monday to the biggest protests in Iran in years, breaking weeks of silence to condemn what he called “rioting” and accuse the U.S. and Israel of planning the protests.
 (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)


The Associated Press
Mon, October 3, 2022 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded publicly on Monday to the biggest protests in Iran in years, breaking weeks of silence to condemn what he called “rioting” and accuse the United States and Israel of planning the protests.

The unrest, ignited by the death of a young woman in the custody of Iran's morality police, is flaring up across the country for a third week despite government efforts to crack down.

On Monday, Iran shuttered its top technology university following an hours-long standoff between students and the police that turned the prestigious institution into the latest flashpoint of protests and ended with hundreds of young people arrested.

Speaking to a cadre of police students in Tehran, Khamenei said he was “deeply heartbroken” by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, calling it a “tragic incident.” However, he lambasted the protests as a foreign plot to destabilize Iran, echoing authorities' previous comments.

“This rioting was planned,” he said. “These riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and their employees.”

Meanwhile, Sharif University of Technology in Tehran announced that only doctoral students would be allowed on campus until further notice following hours of turmoil Sunday, when witnesses said antigovernment protesters clashed with pro-establishment students.

The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the police kept hundreds of students holed up on campus and fired rounds of tear gas to disperse the demonstrations. The student association said plainclothes officers surrounded the school from all sides as protests roiled the campus after nightfall and detained at least 300 students.

Plainclothes officers beat a professor and several university employees, the association added.

The state-run IRNA news agency sought to downplay the violent standoff, reporting a “protest gathering” took place without causing casualties. But it also said police released 30 students from detention, acknowledging many had been caught in the dragnet by mistake as they tried to go home.

The crackdown sparked backlash on Monday at home and abroad.

“Suppose we beat and arrest, is this the solution?” asked a column in the Jomhouri Eslami daily, a hard-line Iranian newspaper. “Is this productive?”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the “the regime's brute force” at Sharif University as "an expression of sheer fear at the power of education and freedom.”

“The courage of Iranians is incredible,” she said.

Iran's latest protest movement, which has produced some of the nation’s most widespread unrest in years, emerged as a response to Amini's death after her arrest for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. It has since grown into an open challenge to the Iranian leadership, with women burning their state-mandated headscarves and chants of “Death to the dictator," echoing from streets and balconies after dark.

The demonstrations have tapped a deep well of grievances in Iran, including the country’s social restrictions, political repression and ailing economy strangled by American sanctions. The unrest has continued in Tehran and far-flung provinces even as authorities have disrupted internet access and blocked social media apps.

Protests also have spread across the Middle East and to Europe and North America. Thousands poured into the streets of Los Angeles to show solidarity. Police scuffled with protesters outside Iranian embassies in London and Athens. Crowds chanted “Woman! Life! Freedom!" in Paris.

In his remarks on Monday, Khamenei condemned scenes of protesters ripping off their hijabs and setting fire to mosques, banks and police cars as “actions that are not normal, that are unnatural.” He warned that “those who foment unrest to sabotage the Islamic Republic deserve harsh prosecution and punishment.”

Security forces have responded with tear gas, metal pellets and in some cases live fire, according to rights groups and widely shared footage, although the scope of the crackdown remains unclear.

Iran’s state TV has reported the death toll from violent clashes between protesters and security officers could be as high as 41. Rights groups have given higher death counts, with London-based Amnesty International saying it has identified 52 victims.

An untold number of people have been apprehended, with local officials reporting at least 1,500 arrests. Security forces have picked up artists who have voiced support for the protests and dozens of journalists. Most recently Sunday, authorities arrested Alborz Nezami, a reporter at an economic newspaper in Tehran.

Iran's intelligence ministry said nine foreigners have been detained over the protests. A 30-year-old Italian traveler named Alessia Piperno called her parents on Sunday to say she had been arrested, her father Alberto Piperno told Italian news agency ANSA.

“We are very worried," he said. “The situation isn’t going well.”

Most of the protesters appear to be under 25, according to witnesses — Iranians who have grown up knowing little but global isolation and severe Western sanctions linked to Iran's nuclear program. Talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal have stalled for months, fueling discontent as Iran's currency declines in value and prices soar.

A Tehran-based university teacher, Shahindokht Kharazmi, said the new generation has come up with unpredictable ways to defy authorities.

“The (young protesters) have learned the strategy from video games and play to win,” Kharazmi told the pro-reform Etemad newspaper. “There is no such thing as defeat for them.”

As the new academic year began this week, students at universities in major cities across Iran gathered in protest, according to videos widely shared on social media, clapping, chanting slogans against the government and waving their headscarves.

The eruption of student anger has worried the Islamic Republic since at least 1999, when security forces and supporters of hard-line clerics attacked students protesting media restrictions. That wave of student protests under former reformist President Mohammad Khatami touched off the worst street battles since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Don’t call it a protest, it’s a revolution now,” shouted students at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, as women set their hijabs alight.

“Students are awake, they hate the leadership!” chanted crowds at the University of Mazandaran in the country's north.

Riot police have been out in force, patrolling streets near universities on motorbikes.


Iran's Khamenei backs police over Mahsa Amini protests, may signal tougher crackdown


Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews armed forces during a graduation ceremony for armed Forces Officers' Universities at the police academy in Tehran

Mon, October 3, 2022 
By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran's supreme leader on Monday gave his full backing to security forces confronting protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody, comments that could herald a harsher crackdown to quell unrest more than two weeks since she died.

In his first remarks addressing the 22-year-old woman's death after her arrest by morality police over "inappropriate attire", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said her death "deeply broke my heart" and called it a "bitter incident" provoked by Iran's enemies.

"The duty of our security forces, including police, is to ensure the safety of the Iranian nation...The ones who attack the police are leaving Iranian citizens defenceless against thugs, robbers and extortionists," Khamenei told a group of armed forces cadets in Tehran.

Security forces, including police and the volunteer Basij militia, have been leading a crackdown on the protests, with thousands arrested and hundreds injured, according to rights groups, which put the death toll at over 130.

Iranian authorities have reported many members of the security forces killed during the unrest, which has spiralled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran's authorities in years, with many calling for the end of more than four decades of Islamic clerical rule.

Khamenei said security forces had faced "injustice" during the protests. "In recent incidents, it is above all security forces including the police and Basij, as well as the people of Iran, who were wronged," he said.

"Some people have caused insecurity in the streets," Khamenei said, sharply condemning what he described as planned "riots", and accusing the United States and Israel - the Islamic Republic's arch-adversaries - of orchestrating the disturbances.

'SCHEMES'

"I openly state that the recent riots were schemes designed by America, the fake Zionist regime (Israel) and their mercenaries inside and outside Iran," said Khamenei, Iran's utmost authority.

Within hours after Amini's funeral in the Kurdish town of Saqez on Sept. 17, thousands of Iranians poured into the streets across the country, with people burning pictures of Khamenei and chanting "Death to the dictator", according to videos on social media.

Still, there is little chance of a collapse of the Islamic Republic in the near term, since its leaders are determined not to show the kind of weakness they believe sealed the fate of the U.S.-backed Shah in 1979, officials and analysts told Reuters.

However, the unrest calls into the question the priority that has defined Khamenei's rule - the survival at any cost of the four-decade-old Islamic Republic and its religious elite.

"Those who ignited unrest to sabotage the Islamic Republic deserve harsh prosecution and punishment," said Khamenei.

The protests have not abated despite a growing death toll and an increasingly violent crackdown by security forces using tear gas, clubs and - in some cases, according to videos on social media and rights groups - live ammunition.

Protests continued across Iran on Monday, with university students staging strikes after security forces clashed with students at Tehran's prominent Sharif University on Sunday.

Dozens of students were arrested and many have been injured according to social media posts and videos. Iran's state news agency said most of arrested students were released on Monday. Reuters could not verify the videos and posts.

Authorities said only doctoral students at Sharif University would be allowed on campus until further notice, state media reported.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Tom Perry and Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich)

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