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Iran’s Baluchis renew major anti-regime protests as uprising continues

By Mahmoud Hakamian
Iranian workers on strike
Contract workers of the Arik Sanat Company in Isfahan, central Iran, joined the nationwide strike by the country’s industrial workers – May 5, 2023

Last update: 7:00 pm CET

Iran’s nationwide uprising is witnessing its 233rd day on Saturday following a major demonstration by the country’s Baluchi community on Friday. Brave locals in the city of Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan & Baluchestan, took to the streets in vast numbers following their weekly Friday prayer and began chanting anti-regime slogans. The demonstrators vowed to continue their struggle against the mullahs’ dictatorship and rejected any calls for a return of Iran to a monarchial rule.

People throughout Iran continue to specifically hold the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responsible for their miseries, while also condemning the oppressive the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and paramilitary Basij units, alongside other security units that are on the ground suppressing the peaceful demonstrators.

Protests in Iran have to this day expanded to at least 282 cities. Over 750 people have been killed and more than 30,000 are arrested by the regime’s forces, according to sources of Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The names of 675 killed protesters have been published by the PMOI/MEK.

On Saturday, a group of residents from Jalmajerd village in Markazi province, central Iran, held a protest rally in front of the governorate building of Khomeyn county. The protesters are demanding their rightful access to irrigation water. Access to water has become a major contention point in the region, as regime institutions divert water sources to projects that benefit their interests at the expense of farmers and other people in need of water.

In Isfahan province, central Iran, a group of orchard owners held a protest rally to raise their unmet demands.

In Tehran, a group of students and education activists held a protest rally in Khajeh Nasir Toosi University as authorities have refrained to answer their demands.

Other reports indicate that the regime continues to target schoolchildren in its serial chemical gas attacks. On Saturday, in Marivan, Kurdistan province, regime agents targeted two all-girls schools, Mab’ath and Om ol-Mo’menin. Several students were taken to the hospital after being exposed to poisonous gases.

Labor protests and strikes that began in the past weeks continued on Saturday. In Isfahan province, central Iran, workers of the Ardestan Gas Compressor Station stopped working and joined the nationwide strikes. In Zanjan, northwest Iran, railway workers held a protest rally to raise their demands, including the payment of delayed wages.

 

 

New videos coming from inside Iran show that people held nightly protest rallies on Friday despite the regime’s extensive security measures and efforts to intimidate the public. In Mashhad, protesters were chanting, “This is the year Seyyed Ali [Khamenei] is overthrown!” and “Down with Khamenei!”

The people of Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan & Baluchestan, were in the streets again on Friday following their weekly prayers. They launched a large demonstration in the city streets and were chanting anti-regime slogans, including:
“Down with Khamenei!”
“Down with the republic of executions!”
“Khamenei is a murderer! We have nothing to eat!”
“Basij and IRGC members, you are our ISIS!”
“We swear on the blood of our compatriots that we stand to the end!”
“My martyred brother, I will avenge your blood!”
“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
“We don’t want a corrupt system! We don’t want a murdering leader!”
“I will kill those who killed my brother!”

Authorities had been stationing their units in the city streets and arresting a large number of the locals in the past few days. These measures have been aimed at installing fear among the public and preventing them from joining Friday’s protest rally and marches in the city streets.

The brave Baluchis took part in their large demonstration despite the fact that regime authorities have executed at least 20 of members of Iran’s Baluchi community in the past week alone.

Iranian opposition coalition NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi praised the courageous people of Zahedan and Iran’s Baluchi community for continuing their anti-regime protests today despite the regime’s recent wave of horrific executions parallel to numerous other crackdown measures aimed at silencing the Iranian people, especially the brave Baluchi community.

According to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet connectivity across the globe, Zahedan was faced with a major disruption of internet access on Friday. The regime regularly shuts down the internet in times of protests. Previous reports indicate that the regime has established a complex and expensive censorship apparatus that allows it to implement granular internet censorship in different areas during times of uprising and unrest.

https://twitter.com/netblocks/status/1654603254934773760

Contract workers of the Arik Sanat Company in Isfahan, central Iran, launched their strike on Friday and joined the ongoing nationwide labor campaign, protesting their officials’ refusal to increase their salaries. Workers in more than 110 sites of the oil, gas, petrochemical, steel, copper and other such industries are on strike and continuing to remain steadfast in their stance.

The protests in Iran began following the death of Mahsa Amini. Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman from the city of Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, western Iran, who traveled to Tehran with her family, was arrested on Tuesday, September 13, at the entry of Haqqani Highway by the regime’s so-called “Guidance Patrol” and transferred to the “Moral Security” agency.

She was brutally beaten by the morality police and died of her wounds in a Tehran hospital on September 16. The event triggered protests that quickly spread across Iran and rekindled the people’s desire to overthrow the regime.

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