No fewer than 200 people have been confirmed dead so far in Iran ever since a nationwide protest broke out over the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, the country’s top security body confirmed on Sunday.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, had died on September 16 after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s dress code for women.
Quoted by the official IRNA news agency, the country’s Supreme National Security Council said the number of people killed during unrest sparked by her death ‘exceeds 200’.
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It said the figure included security officers, civilians, and “separatists” as well as ‘rioters’— a term used by Iranian officials to describe protesters.
A general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps this week, for the first time, said more than 300 people had lost their lives in the unrest.
The security council said that in addition to the human toll, the violence had caused millions of dollars in damage.
Oslo-based non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights on Tuesday said at least 448 people had been ‘killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests’.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said last week that 14,000 people, including children, had been arrested in the protest crackdown.
Some of the Iranian activists have made an open call on all the football fans who would be attending Iran’s matches at the World Cup which is starting later this month to chant the name of Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody had sparked some nationwide protests.
It has also been reported that Iran has been rocked by eight weeks of protests since Amini’s death, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress rules which had been stipulated for women based on Islamic sharia law.
In spite of a bloody crackdown, the protests that initially saw women burn their hijab headscarves and cut their hair have evolved into a broader movement calling for the end of the Islamic republic.