Global Courant
Clashes broke out when a riot took place in a prison in southwestern Iran.
Clashes broke out in Iran’s restive southeast on Friday to mark the first anniversary of security forces’ crackdown on protesters known as “Bloody Friday,” according to rights groups and videos on social media.
Videos posted on social media by the Iran Human Rights (IHR) group showed protesters confronting security forces in Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, as clear sounds of shooting could be heard.
IHR and Baluch rights group Hal Vash said at least 23 people had been injured.
The clashes followed an incident at a prison in southwestern Iran in which prisoners set fires to protest a death sentence against a fellow inmate. Shots were heard, an Iranian news agency reported.
“After the announcement of the death sentence of a prisoner in Ramhormoz prison, several prisoners started a riot by setting fire,” the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Friday. “Gunfire could be heard from outside the prison.”
Mehr later reported that “calm” had been restored.
Back in Zahedan, protests continued well into the night, with several videos posted online claiming protesters were burning tires to block streets.
Zahedan’s prosecutor had earlier said the city was calm and that videos showing the injured were old, state news agency IRNA reported. The semi-official Tasnim news agency said police used tear gas to “disperse a few people who had gathered and threw stones at security forces.”
Internet monitor Netblocks reported a “significant disruption” of the internet in Zahedan on Friday and said authorities had “systematically shut down telecommunications to suppress weekly anti-government protests”.
According to Amnesty International, security forces killed at least 66 people in a crackdown on September 30, 2022. Authorities accused protesters, angry over the alleged rape of a Baluch minority girl by a police commander, of provoking the clashes.
Molavi Abdolhamid, Iran’s most prominent Sunni leader and a longtime critic of Tehran’s Shiite leadership, demanded justice for the victims of the September 30 crackdown.
“The people’s demand over the past year has been that those who committed this crime should be brought to Islamic justice… but judges are not independent in Iran,” Abdolhamid said in a sermon posted online.
Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is one of Iran’s poorest provinces and a major route for drug trafficking.
According to human rights organizations, the Baluch minority, some two million people, has faced discrimination and repression for decades. Iran has said developing the region and resolving its problems is a “serious issue” for the government.
Zahedan has also been the scene of weekly protests since a wave of nationwide unrest was sparked last year by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police that rocked Iran.
