Iran | The protests are intensifying: the state has shot and arrested dozens of children

Mahsa Amini was buried in his hometown of Saquez, Kurdistan on September 17. Some of the women took off their scarves at the funeral, and the occasion turned into a demonstration. Based on videos reviewed by the BBC, Iran’s security service opened fire on the protesters.

A month later, the protests have spread throughout Iran. In their birthplace of Kurdistan, the protests have only expanded and intensified. At the same time, the state’s grip has tightened.

Read more: “The government has weapons, we only have our blood” – Iranian women tell HS about the protests and their meaning

On Wednesday, Iranian security forces killed at least four protesters in Kurdish areas, the Hengaw organization says. In addition, four members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were killed.

Iran Wire news website according to the correspondent, the protests in Saqquez, for example, have only intensified day by day and spread from the main squares to all the neighborhoods. There are armed men of the Iranian National Guard, i.e. the army, “every five meters”.

The woman who sent a video message to CNN said that in Sanandaj the security forces shot at houses with real firearms.

In total More than 200 people have already died in Iran’s protests, said the Norwegian-based Iran Human Rights organization on Wednesday.

Two 16-year-old girls By Nika Shakaram and By Sarina Esmailzadeh The deaths have received a lot of attention. In addition to them, several other teenagers and children have died in the protests.

Human rights organization Amnesty International published on Thursday 19-page report according to at least 23 minors died in the protests in just ten days between the 20th and 30th. September 20 of the dead were boys between the ages of 11 and 17. The dead girls were 16 and 17 years old.

Most of them died after being shot by Iranian security forces. In many cases, the authorities had pressured the family to cover up the details of their child’s death or to lie about them and, for example, claim that the death was caused by the Kurdish opposition.

There are probably many more dead, as the protests have continued through October. For example, Hengaw says a seven-year-old boy died in his mother’s arms on Sunday when security forces fired into the crowd.

In addition, the state has detained hundreds of children. Human rights lawyer Hassan Raisi told the Iran Wire news site that some of the children have ended up in detention centers for adult drug offenders.

US-Iranian human rights activist Hamid Yazdan Panah wrote, that the regime has especially targeted minorities in the demonstrations who have already faced oppression and political violence.

For example, the bloodiest clash of the protests took place in Zahedan, the capital of the province of Sista and Baluchistan, on the last day of September. According to Amnesty, at least 66 protesters, passers-by and worshipers died on the day known as Bloody Friday.

In total, at least 82 people have died in Zahedan during the protests, the organization says.

Sistan and Baluchistan is Iran’s poorest province, and its inhabitants are mainly of the Baluchi minority. The Baluch are predominantly Sunni, while the official religion of Iran’s Islamic regime is Shia. For example, access to government offices in Iran requires recognition of allegiance to the state religion of Iran.

Human rights organizations have also documented an increase in the number of Baloch executions.

Also The majority of Kurds living in the western parts of Iran are Sunni. In Kurdistan, the regime has gathered large numbers of security and military forces in recent weeks to monitor, for example, the capital of the province.

“What is happening in Kurdistan cannot be compared to anything else,” said a correspondent for the Iranian Wire magazine.

The Kurdistan province and the Kurdish regions have a great symbolic meaning for the protests, as Amin’s birthplace is the birthplace of the protests. Also the slogan of the demonstrations – women, life, freedom – is originally Kurdish and used by the Kurds (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi).

A Kurdishtivist by Elif Sarican it is fundamentally important to be aware that Amini was killed specifically as a “Kurdish woman”. He told For The New Arab news sitethat Kurdish women face an added layer of violence.

Its in addition to the fact that the Iranian state is now focusing its violence on Kurdish cities in Iran, it has sent large military forces to the Iraqi Kurdistan border.

Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex Kamran Matini according to reports that Iran may launch a major attack on what it calls Iranian Kurdish opposition camps in Iraq.

“This appears to be an attempt by the regime to divert attention from the protests and also to provoke Kurdish groups into armed conflict in order to get an excuse to tighten their grip on the demonstrations in the cities,” he says in German Deutsche Wellen on video.

During the protests, Iran has repeatedly carried out attacks on Kurdish opposition targets in Iraq, and its airstrikes have killed several people.