The families of the victims and detainees following the protests against the Iranian regime are complaining about the security authorities’ follow-up on them, despite the decline in the intensity of the uprising sparked by the killing of the young woman Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police.
Amini was killed on September 16, 2022, while she was in the custody of police, who arrested her for allegedly not complying with the dress code imposed by the authorities.
On the eve of the first anniversary of her death, police and intelligence patrols are intensifying their pursuit of the families of the victims and detainees so that they do not join the memorial activities expected to be organized on Saturday.
And transfer Report by The Washington PostFriday, testimonies from some Iranians, during which they expressed their dismay at the harassment they are subjected to after the arrest or killing of a family member.
“It’s like the world has fallen on top of me”
For ten days, Ramtin Fathi did not receive news from his father, his uncle, or even his aunt, due to their protest in Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdistan region in northwestern Iran.
In an interview with the American newspaper, this young man revealed that he also participated in a demonstration, in Berlin, in support of the anti-regime movement in his country last October.
“I participated in the protest to be their voice in the world,” said Fathi, a 25-year-old nursing student studying in Germany.
Fathi revealed that he received news of his father’s death, several days after his disappearance, when a friend called him to tell him about it.
“I felt like the world had fallen on my head,” he said, expressing those moments.
“But for his family in Iran, this was just the beginning of their ordeal,” the Washington Post says.
“The Ministry of Intelligence now summons members of our family every week,” Fathi said, then continued, “They threaten them to get them not to participate in the protests.”
He added, “Threats and harassment are increasing as the anniversary approaches,” referring to the one-year anniversary of the death of Amini (22 years old).
At least 530 protesters were killed by Iranian security forces over the past year, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), and the state often targeted their relatives.
In interviews with The Washington Post, grieving families revealed how Iranian authorities systematically monitored and detained them, pressuring them to remain silent and stay off the streets.
Pressure
On September 5, members of Amini’s family were detained and warned against calling for protests to commemorate her death, local human rights monitors reported.
Commenting on this, Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, says, “Pressure comes in the form of phone calls, summoning families, and asking them to remain silent on the anniversary.”
She continues, “Families receive a lot of sympathy from citizens, because they basically represent the lived experience of the injustice that happens to them.”
The spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment on these testimonies, the Washington Post confirms.
The Haidari family is among the first to announce the death of a loved one, after their son Jawad was killed on September 22, 2022 while protesting in the city of Qazvin, where his funeral was broadcast online.
His sister Fatima cried as she cut her hair over his coffin, and those painful photos, along with family videos of Jawad that were shared online, spread widely, “thus thrusting the family into the spotlight and quickly attracting the attention of the security and intelligence forces,” according to the American newspaper.
Fatima Haidari, who now lives in Turkey, told the newspaper, “A few days after what happened to my brother and us sharing the videos, I was arrested and had to go to court because I was summoned on charges of propaganda against the government.”
She continued, “My father was also pressured to say that we were supporters of the regime and that his daughter had acted emotionally, and that we had only made a mistake.”
Raids, arrest orders and expulsion
Their family home has been monitored and raided several times over the past year, forcing some of them to leave.
Haidari said that arrest warrants were also issued against her father, her older brother, and more than a dozen relatives, and even her two-year-old niece was briefly detained with her father.
Four family members lost their jobs, including her brother’s sister-in-law who was fired from her job as a nurse after asking about Jawad’s role in the protests.
The authorities expressed concern about the symbolism of Jawad’s grave, with his sister saying, “They put pressure on us to change the gravestone or said they would come to break it.”
She continued, “These pressures were not only on my family,” and revealed that when people from their village came to the cemetery to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Jawad’s death, many of them were “arrested, beaten, and asked why they came.”
In this regard, Iranian analyst, Sepehri Far, said that while pressure on the families of the victims may suppress the protests in the short term, it may have adverse consequences for the regime.
He also said, “We saw how the families of the 2019 protests joined the families of those who were killed during the 2022 protests, and we saw families who lived the same story during the 1980s, how they renewed their covenant with the protest because of that.”
He concluded by saying, “Every round of protests brings more people together.”
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2023-09-16 08:12:30
