Oct. 14 – At least 28 children in Iran have been killed during anti-government protests, while nine children were confirmed to have been killed by security forces, according to Human Rights Watch this week.
Most of the children who died lived in the Sistan and Baluchistan province, the poorest area in Iran and home to the Baloch people, a minority group routinely targeted and repressed by the Iranian government.
Meanwhile, several high school students taking part in the protests have been arrested and sent to “psychological centers” according to Yousef Nouri, the country’s education minister. Nouri said the students had been sent to the clinics to prevent them from becoming “antisocial” but would not reveal the number of children who had been referred to the centers.
The British government said it had sanctioned Iran’s morality police, calling the scale of the violence by the regime’s security apparatus “shocking,” in a statement issued on Monday.
The UK also sanctioned Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij force alongside Iranian police chiefs Hassan Karami and Hossein Ashtari.
The sanctions were issued in response to the Iranian government’s use of threats and violence against peaceful protesters in the country, including the use of live ammunition against students cornered by security forces at Sharif University in the country’s capital, Tehran.
And oil workers joined the protests this week, accusing the government of widespread repression for failing to address working conditions and pay inside the petrochemical sector.
The workers also warned the government that a failure to release 11 colleagues arrested by the police for striking, would result in larger protests by the sector, in a statement released by the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council.
The council called on all workers in the sector to support the strikes and to launch strike actions of their own.
Kayhan Life’s thoughts remain with Iranians demonstrating for their freedom.
