The United States condemned, on Monday, the repression carried out by the Iranian authorities against its citizens protesting the killing of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by the morality police for wearing “inappropriate clothes”, which led to the outbreak of the largest demonstrations in the country since 2019. .
“We condemn the violence and brutality practiced by Iranian forces against Iranian demonstrators and the killing of dozens of them,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press conference, noting that the United States “continues to follow up on the protests in Iran.”
Price stressed that “the Iranian authorities should listen to the demonstrators, rather than shoot them.”
Price indicated that “Mahsa Amini was arrested, and there is a video of her after her arrest, and then she died after her arrest, and the evidence is clear that she was killed.”
Price called on the international community to raise its voice against the Iranian government’s actions and to support Iranians exercising their right to demonstrate.
Price had confirmed in an interview with Al-Hurra channel that his country supports the aspirations of the Iranian people and peoples around the world, adding that the Iranian people are looking forward to higher levels of freedom and democracy.
In the first comment after Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree granting former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, a refugee in Russia, Russian citizenship, Price said: “Our position has not changed that Snowden should return to the United States to face justice.”
The State Department spokesman added that Putin’s decision did not change anything in Snowden’s status, “except that he became a Russian citizen and could be conscripted for military service.”
Price stressed that “the referendums that Russia is conducting in Ukraine are fake, and we will not recognize their results and the annexation of Ukrainian lands to Russia.”
And he considered that “the steps taken by the Russian president show that he is aware that he is losing.”