Footage shared on social media showed passengers running for the exits, with many falling and being trampled, after police opened fire on a packed platform. Police were also filmed through train windows walking through carriages and beating women with batons. Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died in the custody of morality police on September 16 after she was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. Demonstrations intensified on Tuesday when protest organizers called for three days of action to mark “Bloody November” in 2019, when hundreds were killed during protests against fuel price hikes. “We will fight! We will die! We will take back Iran!’ dozens of protesters could be heard shouting around a bonfire on a street in Tehran, in a video posted by social media monitor 1500tasvir. Protesters were also recorded shouting and setting headscarves on fire at metro stations. Agence France-Presse reported that six people were killed across the country in clashes overnight. Metro stations and public transport – often patrolled by morality police – had become sites of state violence and surveillance of female citizens during the summer crackdown on women’s clothing. In early September, the secretary of Iran’s headquarters for the promotion of virtue and prevention of evil, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, announced that the government planned to use facial recognition technology to target women recorded on public transport security cameras. In a separate development on Wednesday, state media reported that at least five people were killed in what it described as a terrorist attack on a market in the city of Izeh in the southwestern province of Khuzestan. Iran’s ethnic Arab minority, who live mostly in Khuzestan, have joined the protests sparked by Amini’s death. “Five people were killed in the terrorist attack, among them a child, a woman and three men,” local official Valiola Hayati told state television. The semi-official Isna news agency reported that two members of Iran’s Basij volunteer militia were among the dead. The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the seminary school in Izeh was set on fire by anti-government protesters. Videos on social media showed the building burning while gunshots rang out. It was not possible to ascertain the circumstances under which people had died. More than 300 people have been killed by security forces during two months of protests, according to the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights Watch (IHR). The group says 15,000 people have been arrested, a figure Iranian authorities deny. Five protesters have been sentenced to death so far. Earlier this month, 272 of Iran’s 290 lawmakers voted to impose the death penalty for serious crimes against the state, and repeated calls by some officials for a tougher line against the unrest show little sign of abating. The vote became the subject of misleading information that all 15,000 of those arrested had been sentenced to death. The claim has been repeatedly posted on social media, including by high-profile figures such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, a possible wave of executions is a serious concern. “We fear mass executions unless the political cost of executions increases significantly,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the IHR. “The international community must send a strong warning to the Islamic Republic that executing protesters will have serious consequences.”
