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CNN —
Iran’s Supreme Leader has praised the country’s Basij paramilitary unit for its role successful the deadly crackdown connected anti-regime protesters.
Meeting with Basij unit successful Tehran Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the fashionable protestation question arsenic “rioters” and “thugs” backed by overseas forces and praised “innocent” Basij fighters for protecting the nation.
The Basij is simply a helping of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard deployed to the streets arsenic protests person swelled since September.
The protestation question was initially sparked by the decease of 22-year-old pistillate Mahsa Amini successful the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Amnesty International says the Basij person been ordered to “mercilessly confront” protesters.
“When facing the force connected the tract of conflict the Basij has ever shown itself to beryllium courageous, not acrophobic of the enemy,” the Supreme Leader said Saturday.
“You saw successful the astir caller events, our guiltless and oppressed Basijis became the targets of oppression truthful that they wouldn’t let the federation to go the targets of rioters and thugs and those connected the [enemy] payroll, whether wittingly oregon unwittingly. They gave of themselves to escaped others,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei’s words travel a time aft United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned Iran is successful a “full-fledged quality rights crisis” owed to the clampdown connected anti-regime dissidents.
Turk called for “independent, impartial and transparent investigative processes” into violations of quality rights successful Iran during a peculiar session of the UN Human Rights Council connected Thursday.
He told the 47-member states assembly successful Geneva that information forces person reportedly responded to protests by utilizing lethal unit against unarmed demonstrators and bystanders who posed “no threat.”
More than 14,000 people, including children, person been arrested successful transportation with the protests, according to Turk. He said that astatine slightest 21 of them presently look the decease punishment and six person already received decease sentences.
Among those arrested are 2 well-known Iranian actors, Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, who were taken into custody connected abstracted occasions for publically backing the nationwide protests, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
The Islamic Republic has been gripped by a question of anti-government protests sparked by the decease of Amini allegedly for not wearing her hijab properly.
Authorities person since unleashed a deadly crackdown connected demonstrators, with reports of forced detentions and carnal maltreatment being utilized to people the country’s Kurdish number group. In a recent CNN investigation, covert grounds revealed intersexual unit against protesters, including boys, successful Iran’s detention centers since the commencement of the unrest.
The unprecedented nationalist uprising has taken clasp of much than 150 cities and 140 universities successful each 31 provinces of Iran, according to Turk.
The convulsive effect of Iran’s information forces toward protesters has shaken diplomatic ties betwixt Tehran and Western leaders.
The White House connected Wednesday imposed its latest circular of sanctions connected 3 officials successful Iran’s Kurdish region, aft US Secretary Antony Blinken said helium was “greatly acrophobic that Iranian authorities are reportedly escalating unit against protesters.”
During an interrogation with Indian broadcaster NDTV connected Thursday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said overseas powers were intervening successful Iranian interior affairs and creating “fallacious narratives.”
English (US)