Two people killed, as Iran protests over death of Mahsa Amini enter fourth week

Anti-government demonstrations erupted on Saturday in several locations across Iran as the most sustained protests in years against a deeply entrenched theocracy entered their fourth week. At least two people were killed.

Marchers chanted anti-government slogans and twirled headscarves in repudiation of coercive religious dress codes. In some areas, merchants closed shops in response to a call by activists for a commercial strike or to protect their wares from damage.

Later on Saturday, hackers broke into the evening news on Iran’s state TV for 15 seconds, just as footage of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was being broadcast. The hackers flashed an image of Khamenei surrounded by flames. A caption read “Join us and stand up!” and “The blood of our youth is dripping from your claws,” a reference to Khamenei.

A song with the lyrics “Woman. Life. Freedom” – a common chant of the protesters – played in the background.

The protests erupted September 17, after the burial of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who had died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women. Since then, protests spread across the country and were met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.

In the city of Sanandaj in the Kurdish-majority northern region, one man was shot dead on Saturday while driving a car in a major thoroughfare, rights monitors said. The France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network and the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, said the man was shot after honking at security forces stationed on the street. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience. Video circulating online showed the slain man slumped over the steering wheel, as distraught witnesses shouted for help.