Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are calling on the Islamic Republic’s judiciary to crack down on protests following the death of a young woman.
Those who “spread false news and rumors on social networks and who endanger the physical security of society on the street” must be prosecuted, the Revolutionary Guards said today. According to reports in the Iranian media, demonstrations by government supporters are planned for tomorrow.
The Revolutionary Guards were founded by the then revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and have repeatedly crushed protest movements. In general, the government seems to want to take more decisive action against the demonstrators.
“The will of the Iranian people is: Don’t spare the criminals!” said a comment in the pro-government newspaper “Kaihan”. Despite this, the protests spread, according to reports on social networks.
Attacks on the police and other security forces continued in the capital Tehran and other cities in the country. In Mashhad, in the northeast of the country, protesters near a burning police station chanted, “We will die, we will die, but we will get Iran back.”
The protests started in the predominantly Kurdish north-west of the country, where Amini is from, and quickly spread to other parts of the country, including the capital.
The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw reported that twelve people had died in the Kurdish areas alone because of the protests. The authorities deny being responsible for the deaths of demonstrators. Archyde.com could not independently verify the information.