Dubai: At least 208 people in Iran have been killed amid protests over sharply rising gasoline prices and a subsequent crackdown by security forces, Amnesty International has said, as one government official acknowledged telling police to shoot demonstrators.
Iran has yet to release any nationwide statistics over the unrest that gripped the Islamic Republic beginning 15 November with minimum prices for government-subsidized gasoline rising by 50 per cent.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations disputed Amnesty’s findings early today, though it offered no evidence to support its claim. Iran shut down internet access amid the unrest, blocking those inside the country from sharing their videos and information, as well as limiting the outside world from knowing the scale of the protests and violence.
The restoration of the internet in recent days across much of the country has seen other videos surface. “We’ve seen over 200 people killed in a very swift time, in under a week,” said Mansoureh Mills, an Iran researcher at Amnesty. “It’s something pretty unprecedented event in the history of the human rights violations in the Islamic Republic.”
While not drawing as many Iranians into the streets as those protesting the disputed 2009 presidential election, the gasoline price demonstrations rapidly turned violent faster than any previous rallies. That shows the widespread economic discontent gripping the country since May 2018, when President Donald Trump imposed crushing sanctions after unilaterally withdrawing from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. Since the summer, tensions across the Mideast have spiked with attacks the US blames on Tehran.
Iran, meanwhile, began to break the deal’s centrifuges, enrichment and stockpile limitations with hopes of pressuring Europe to offer it a way to sell crude oil abroad despite Washington’s sanctions. In a statement Monday, Amnesty said there had been dozens of deaths in the Tehran suburb of Shahriar, likely one of the areas with the highest toll of those killed in the unrest. Shahriar had seen heavy protests.
Amnesty offered no breakdown for the deaths elsewhere in the country, though it said “the real figure is likely to be higher.” Mills said there was a “general environment of fear inside of Iran at the moment. “The authorities have been threatening families, some have been forced to sign undertakings that they won’t speak to the media,” she said. “Families have been forced to bury their loved ones at night under heavy security presence.”
Authorities also have been visiting hospitals, looking for patients with gunshot wounds or other injuries from the unrest, Mills said. She alleged authorities then immediately detain those with the suspicious wounds. Iran’s UN mission in New York called Amnesty’s findings unsubstantiated, without elaborating.