Iran’s police vow to crack down as Protests enters third week

• Iranian police say they will soon stop nationwide protests over her death.
• Authorities have killed dozens of protesters and shut down the internet to hide violence.
• Some estimates say as many as 200 people have died and 10,000 have been arrested.

Iranian police say they will soon stop nationwide protests over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini “with all their might.”

During the 11 days of protests, Iranian authorities have already killed dozens of protesters and shut down the internet to hide the violence. Protesters have set fire to police stations and killed several members of the Basij paramilitary group who were working for the government.

“Police officers will fight with all their might against plots by counter-revolutionaries and hostile elements,” Iranian police said in a statement on Wednesday. “Those who disrupt public order and safety anywhere in the country will be dealt with harshly.”

Because Iran has shut down its internet, it is hard to know how many people have been arrested or killed in the unrest. Some estimates say as many as 200 people have died and 10,000 have been arrested.

Protesters want Iran to stop making women wear the Hijab and stop doing other things that hurt women’s rights. During the protests, many women who wore hijabs set them on fire in the street.

The protests started when Iran’s morality police arrested Amini for not wearing her hijab correctly in September. She got hurt badly while in jail and was taken to the hospital in a coma, where she died soon after.

Iranian authorities are said to have denied that they had anything to do with Amini’s death, saying that she just passed out while in custody. Amini’s family says that when they got to the hospital, they saw marks on her body that showed she had been hit.

Most of Iran’s Kurdish minority group lives in the northeast, where the most trouble has been happening. Amini was a Kurd herself.

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