In a sweeping operation forward of an vital anniversary, the Iranian authorities have detained no less than 12 rights activists, all however considered one of them ladies, over the previous two days, human rights teams and Iranian media have reported.
A yr in the past subsequent month, Iran was convulsed in demonstrations and riots following the dying in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the nation’s morality police after officers accused her of carrying her state-mandated non secular veil too loosely. Hundreds had been killed within the ensuing authorities crackdown, together with no less than 44 minors, whereas round 20,000 Iranians had been arrested, the United Nations calculated.
The arrested activists had been rounded up in cities throughout Iran’s northern Gilan Province, in keeping with HRANA, an Iranian human rights group. Their households weren’t offered any info on their situation or the place they had been being held, HRANA reported.
On Thursday, Iranian officers accused the 12 detainees of planning to incite “chaos and vandalism” on the upcoming anniversary of Ms. Amini’s dying, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported. According to Fars, which has shut ties to the nation’s safety businesses, the officers additionally accused the activists of collaborating with Iran International, an opposition tv channel primarily based in Washington.
After her arrest final yr, Ms. Amini, who got here from Kurdistan Province in northwestern Iran, died beneath suspicious circumstances in a Tehran hospital, prompting months of protests by Iranians, a lot of whom noticed her dying as emblematic of the heavy-handed and repressive nature of the Islamic Republic.
The outrage was stoked by a picture and video of Ms. Amini that circulated extensively on social media exhibiting her mendacity unconscious on a hospital mattress with tubes in her mouth and nostril, blood oozing from her ear and bruises round her eyes.
The widespread unrest marked essentially the most severe problem to the Islamic Republic since one other wave of anti-government demonstrations in 2009, prompted by accusations of widespread election fraud.
Iranian opposition activists say stress from the authorities has been constructing because the anniversary of Ms. Amini’s dying on September sixteenth final yr has approached.
Police rearrested a scholar journalist, Nazila Maroufian, on Monday, only a day after she was launched on bail, in keeping with HRANA. Ms. Maroufian revealed an interview with Ms. Amini’s father, Amjad, final October by which he accused the Iranian authorities of mendacity about his daughter’s dying.
Omid Memarian, an analyst at Democracy for the Arab World, a U.S.-based advocacy group, stated the uptick in safety operations displays “the authorities’ concerns about a new round of protests” regardless of the largely profitable crackdown.
“The energy, anger and frustration are there, and once there is an opening, it will come to the surface,” stated Mr. Memarian.
Source: www.nytimes.com