“At night the explosions wake us up,” confirms the priest. The target is Iranian Kurdish refugee camps or centers of resistance. About 12 victims of the attacks, including a pregnant woman. At mass with the youth, prayer for those who fight for their freedom and their rights. A besieged university in Tehran. A 30-year-old Italian tourist was also arrested.
Erbil () – The violence that has been unleashed as a result of the protests over the death at the hands of the moral police of the young Iranian Kurdish Mahsa Amini, 22, has reached Iraqi Kurdistan. “It’s been several days since Tehran started bombing different points, from Erbil to Ankawa and Sulaymaniyya. At night we are woken up by explosions. The target is the refugee camps or the centers where Kurds or Iranian dissidents live who fled a few days ago. time”, explains to Father Samir Youssef, parish priest of the diocese of Amadiya, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where there have also been several victims in recent days. “The bombs and drone attacks – he continues – have killed at least 12 people and there are dozens of wounded. Among the victims, the death of a young pregnant woman in a refugee camp caused a special shock; the doctors managed to at least save the child.”
The presence of Iranian Kurds, or members of the dissidents, began years ago and is related to high-level political agreements, conditional on Kurdistan not launching attacks on Iranian territory. “It is known that there are bases of resistance – confirms Fr. Samir, but there had been no major problems and, unlike Turkey with the PKK, Tehran was not attacking. But the situation changed when the young woman died and the demonstrations began. Our territory became the target of attacks, fueling a climate of tension and fear.” What happened to the young Kurdish woman, he says, had “wide coverage in the regional and national press, with expressions of support for the Iranian people and their legitimate demands for freedom and rights.”
Meanwhile, news of the repression endorsed by the authorities continues to arrive from Iran. According to Amnesty International sources, the Tehran government has ordered the security forces to repress the demonstrations “severely and without mercy”. The activist movement affirms that there are documents dated September 21, coming from the Armed Forces headquarters and addressed to the commanders of the different divisions, in which they ask “to treat anti-revolutionaries and rioters with the utmost severity.” Another document from the 23rd for the province of Mazandrán urges “to deal mercilessly, to the point of causing death, any disorder caused by rebels and anti-revolutionaries.”
However, the threats and violence of the ayatollahs do not stop the wave of protests, which continues in the streets, in the squares and even on the university campuses, which are besieged. At Tehran’s Sharif University, for example, violent clashes broke out between officers – including plainclothes officers – and students. Last night, members of the Basij militia “surrounded the campus and opened fire” using rubber bullets. They arrested about a hundred people, including students and teachers.” In a video that was uploaded to social networks, despite the blockade of the network imposed by the authorities, you can see students being chased by police and checkpoints at the doors of the university, which at the moment is more like a prison.
Among those arrested is also the journalist who first spread the news of Mahsa’s death. For several years, Niloofar Hamedi has been covering news related to the morality police squads and their influence – growing since the rise to the presidency of the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi – in Iranian society. At the same time, the death toll has increased to 133 and there are more than a thousand (although it is difficult to have reliable figures) people detained by the security forces. One of them is a young Italian tourist, Alessia Piperno, 30 (who was apparently not involved in the protests, although she wrote about them on her social media) who was arrested on her birthday. During the night, the family made a desperate appeal on social networks, asking the Rome government for help so that she could be released.
Father Samir stresses that “Iranian Christians are also deeply concerned about what is happening.” And the protests in the streets over the death of Mahsa Amini were also the subject of confrontation and discussion at the meeting of the youth of the diocese, organized by the same priest: “The women feel affected by what happened, they are sad and in pain” for the deaths and for the videos where they cut their hair. However, they support with equal strength their fight for freedoms and rights, and in the masses that we have celebrated these days we have also prayed for them.”
