Students from various schools in Iran have been waving their hijabs (veils) in the air and chanting slogans against the country’s authorities, in an unprecedented show of support for the ongoing protests in the Persian nation.
Videos verified by the BBC show demonstrations inside schoolyards and on the streets of various cities.
Their protests come as part of broader demonstrations sparked by the death last month of a young woman who was detained by Iran’s “morality police” for violating the headscarf law.
According to images posted on social media on Monday, a group of students forced an education official to leave his school in Karaj.
Footage shows the girls yelling “shame on you” and throwing what appear to be empty water bottles at the man until he walks out a door.
In another video from the city of Karaj, which is situated just west of the capital Tehran, female students are heard shouting: “If we don’t unite, they will kill us one by one.”
In the southern city of Shiraz on Monday, dozens of students blocked traffic on a main road as they waved their handkerchiefs and shouted “death to the dictator,” in a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word in all affairs of state.
More student protests were reported Tuesday in Karaj, Tehran and the northwestern cities of Saqez and Sanandaj.
Several young women were also photographed standing in their classrooms bareheaded.
Some raised the middle finger, making a sign that is considered obscene, before the portraits of Ayatollah Khamenei and the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
national outrage
The student demonstrations began hours after Ayatollah Khamenei broke his silence on the protests and accused the United States and Israel, Iran’s archenemies, of orchestrating “riots.”
He also gave his full support to the security forces, who have responded to the protests with a violent crackdown.
The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who fell into a coma after being detained by morality police on September 13 in Tehran, for allegedly breaking the law requiring women to cover themselves. hair with a veil or scarf. She died in hospital three days later.
Her family has alleged that the officers hit her on the head with a baton and threw her against one of their vehicles. Police have denied she was mistreated and she said she suffered “sudden heart failure”.
The first protests took place in the Kurdish-populated northwest of Iran, where Amini lived, and then quickly spread across the country.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-63126138, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-10-04 19:30:06
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