TEHRAN: Iranian security forces fired tear gas on Wednesday at a lawyers’ protest over Mahsa Amini’s death, said a rights group, which also raised the death toll to at least 108 from the crackdown on the nearly month-long movement.

“Woman, life, freedom,” the lawyers in Tehran chanted in their first solidarity rally with the women-led demonstrations that have swept Iran since the 22-year-old’s death, said Oslo-based Iran Human Rights.

Soon after, they were seen running from under a cloud of tear gas, in footage distributed online by IHR despite a major internet outage, and one lawyer later said three of the demonstrators were held.

Amini, an Iranian of Kurdish origin, died on September 16 after falling into a coma following her arrest in the capital by police for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s dress code for women.

Khamenei accuses Tehran’s enemies of stoking street riots; death toll rises to 108

Anger flared at her funeral and spread to become the biggest wave of protests to rock Iran in almost three years, despite a crackdown that has killed scores and seen hundreds arrested.

Deadly unrest has rocked Sanandaj in Amini’s western home province of Kurdistan, but also Zahedan in Iran’s far southeast, where demonstrations erupted over the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police commander.

Activists in Tehran called for protesters to turn out “in solidarity with the people of Sanandaj and the heroic people of Zahedan”.

“We don’t want spectators. Come and join us,” sang a group of mainly young women as they clapped at a roundabout in Tehran’s Azad University, in other footage posted on Twitter by IHR.

The protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” was spray-painted on the wall of the former US embassy — abandoned in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution — but later painted over, an image obtained by AFP showed.

In a televised meeting with an advisory body on Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Iran’s “enemies” of stoking “these street riots”.

“The actions of the enemy, such as propaganda, trying to influence minds, creating excitement, encouraging and even teaching the manufacture of incendiary materials, are now completely clear,” he said.

Khamenei accused the US, Israel and their “agents” of fomenting the unrest sparked by Amini’s death. “Today, everyone confirms the involvement of the enemies in these street riots,” he said.

The Norway-based Iran Human Rights said the crackdown killed at least 108 people, and that at least another 93 people died in Zahedan. The group indicated its investigation into the “repression” in Kurdistan had been hampered by internet restrictions and warned of an “impending bloody crackdown” there.

IHR also said workers had joined protest strikes this week at the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest, Abadan in the west and Bushehr in the south.

The Tehran-based Children’s Rights Protection Society, which reported a death toll of 28 for minors, condemned security forces for violence against children.

Human rights lawyer Hassan Raisi said around 300 people, aged between 12 and 19, were in police custody, some of them in detention centres for adult drug offenders.

Khamenei said, “Some of these people are either enemy agents or... aligned with the enemy, and some are excited people.” He added that the judicial and security authorities must do their duty in dealing with the “enemy agents”.

He called anti-government protests “scattered riots” designed by the enemy, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday.

Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2022