‘Not afraid anymore’: Iran protests enter fourth week

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Schoolgirls chanted slogans, workers went on strike and street clashes erupted across Iran as protests over the death of Mahsa Amini entered a fourth week in defiance of a bloody crackdown.

Anger flared after the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurd’s death on September 16, three days after she was arrested by “morality police” for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women.

An investigation found Amini died of a longstanding illness rather than “blows” to the head, Iran said on Friday, despite her family reportedly saying she had previously been healthy.

But the protests continued on Saturday even as President Ebrahim Raisi posed for a group photograph with students at Tehran’s all-female Al-Zahra University to mark the new academic year.

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The government has described the protests as a plot by Iran’s enemies including the United States, accusing armed dissidents – among others – of violence in which at least 20 members of the security forces have been reported killed.

Raisi addressed professors and students. “They imagine they can achieve their evil goals in universities,” state TV reported. “Unbeknownst to them, our students and professors are alert and will not allow the enemy to realise their evil goals.”

In Amini’s hometown Saqez, in the western province of Kurdistan, schoolgirls were heard chanting “Woman, life, freedom” and seen marching down a street swinging headscarves over their heads, in videos the Hengaw rights group said were recorded on Saturday.

In another video it shared, a group of girls could be heard chanting the same phrase as they entered a school in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province.

Gruesome videos were widely shared on Twitter of a man who appeared to have been killed while sitting at the wheel of his car in Sanandaj, where gunfire was heard in other footage.

A police official said security forces did not use live rounds and the man was killed by “counter-revolutionaries”, the state news agency IRNA reported.

Iran’s semi-official news agencies played down the protests across the capital Tehran. The ISNA agency reported “limited” demonstrations in about 10 areas of the city and said many Bazaar traders had shut their shops for fear of damage caused by the unrest, denying there was a strike.

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