As protesters in Saqqez despaired over the lack of progress in the face of an intensifying government crackdown, some turned to violence.
The wave of anti-government protests which have rocked Iran for nearly five months began in the town of Saqqez, in the Kurdish west. In the face of a brutal and intensifying crackdown, protesters started to meet force with force — targeting security forces in their homes, laying traps for policemen on motorcycles and preparing molotov cocktails.As the hometown of Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of the morality police on Sept.
As the crowd grew, protesters began chanting “death to jash,” a term which means donkey in Kurdish, a reference to Kurdish security forces who work for the government. Officials came out of the building and tried to convince the crowd to disperse, but no one was in the mood to go home. Across Iran, more than 500 people have been killed and nearly 20,000 arrested since protests began, human rights group“The regime’s Pavlovian reaction to any protest is to nip it in the bud to prevent it from growing. But its violence fueled, not extinguished, the public’s fury,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group.
That was the moment, residents say, that some groups among the protesters decided to start going after security forces directly. One week after Pabandi’s death, Shaho Shira, a member of the IRGC, was killed in Saqqez by “anonymous attackers," Hengaw reported.Local Kurds working with security forces were an easy target since protesters knew where they lived and, in some cases, had known them for years. Several of their houses were hit with molotov cocktails to send a message, residents said.
The authorities stepped up arrests in the city and reports began to emerge of torture in custody. A 34-year old said one of his friends who had been picked up was not the same after he was released from detention. He did not eat or speak much and couldn’t sit comfortably.Another friend who was arrested said his feet were put into a bucket of water and electric cables were inserted. “His feet were so swollen he couldn’t walk,” the man said.
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