Protests over Mahsa Amini’s death reach 19 cities in Iran despite internet disruption
- Iranians keep up anti-government protests despite an increasingly deadly state crackdown
- Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again accused Iran’s ‘enemies’ of stoking the demonstrations
Protests swept across at least 19 cities in Iran on Wednesday sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained last month by the country’s morality police, even as security forces targeted demonstrators in the streets, activists said.
The protests over the death of Mahsa Amini have become one of the greatest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 Green Movement.
Calls for protests beginning at noon Wednesday saw a massive deployment of riot police and plain clothes officers throughout Tehran and other cities, witnesses said and videos showed. Witnesses also described disruptions affecting their mobile internet services.
NetBlocks, an advocacy group, said that Iran’s internet traffic had dropped to some 25 per cent compared to the peak, even during a working day in which students were in class across the country.
“The incident is likely to further limit the free flow of information amid protests,” NetBlocks said.