The protest is still very visible in Iranian streets such as in Mashhad, in the northeast, in Rasht in the northwest or even in Saghez, the birthplace of Mahsa Amini whose death in September…

Iran: the repression of the social movement is particularly violent in Sistan-Baluchistan

Iran: screenshot from a video of protests in Rasht on November 3, 2022. AFP - -

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4 mins

The protest is still very visible in Iranian streets such as in Mashhad, in the northeast, in Rasht in the northwest or in Saghez, the birthplace of Mahsa Amini, whose death in September triggered this protest movement.

In the remote and poor region of Sistan-Baluchistan, the population demonstrates and the repression is fierce, explains Stéphane Dudoignon, researcher at the CNRS.

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Tension is high in Sistan-Baluchistan, a province in the south-east of the country, where four police officers were killed on Saturday in what is described as an "incident" by official media.

Last

week, the security forces opened fire

on protesters, and at the end of September a hundred people were killed.

Senior police

officials have since been sacked

In this poor region where an ethnic minority lives, as in Kurdistan, the repression of the regime is particularly violent, notes

Stéphane Dudoignon

, CNRS researcher and specialist in Iran interviewed by

Guilhem Delteil

, of the international service.

“ 

We have an administration which is very, very widely perceived in these two regions as a colonial-type administration, therefore a legacy, certainly, of practices inherited from the imperial period, but also, very probably, a desire by the current Iranian authorities to rot the situation in such a way as to enable it to militarize the repression in these two regions.

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To read also

: in Iran,

at least one dead and 14 injured in Zahedan, according to state media

So we saw it, in the east, with a particularly high number of deaths during Black Friday in Balochistan, we saw it in the west against the Kurds, with bombardments by drones of the installations of organizations Iranian Kurds in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq on September 28 in particular, with several dozen deaths in both cases.

So we have a combination of legacies of practices, police practices, military practices that the Islamic Republic received as a legacy from the monarchical period, combined with the current will of the power to create abscesses of fixation at its borders, which allow in fact a militarization of repression on its borders then, in a second time, in the whole country

Extract from a video published on October 21, 2022 showing protesters on a street in Zahedan, Iran.

AFP - -

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To read also

: in Iran

tensions on the eastern borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan

This is not a separatist movement

The protest movement that won in this region is not a separatist movement, adds Stéphane Dudoignon.

It fits well into the context of the protest affecting the whole country.

“ 

In Sistan-Baluchistan, we have opinion leaders, whether religious or civil, who are extremely aware of the temptation felt by the authorities to insist on the demonstrations of Sistan-Baluchistan or Kurdistan such as the expression of “ethnic” movements, things that they themselves denigrate, by insisting, in an extremely strong way, on the will to democratize institutions, common to all the protest movements of recent weeks and months;
also emphasizing the socio-economic aspects of the protests that are underway today.

We have even seen in recent days, the

Sunni Sheikh al-Islam of Zahedan

suggest the urgency of a referendum on the institutions and demand, more and more now, a global political change on the scale of the country as a whole, but taking the precaution of insisting on the fact that the movement of which he is today one of the most prominent speakers in the east of Iran is an Iranian movement

►

To go further
:

The work of Stéphane Dudoignon,

The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution of Iran

, published by CNRS editions, 2022

Orient Hebdo:

Unstable situation in Baluchistan

, with Stéphane Dudoignon

((for internet, possibly, we can quote his latest book: "The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution of Iran" published by CNRS editions))

https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/livre-international/20220513-les-gardiens-de-la-r%C3%A9volution-le-vrai-pouvoir-en-iran

Iran: the repression of the social movement is particularly violent in Sistan-Baluchistan

Iran: the repression of the social movement is particularly violent in Sistan-Baluchistan

This is not a separatist movement

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