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Iranian authorities are reportedly detaining dozens of individuals among the many Azerbaijani Turk communities within the nation’s northwest after a neighborhood medical scholar was killed throughout an anti-government protest final week.
Aylar Haqqi, a 23-year-old medical scholar, was killed final Wednesday whereas attending protests in Tabriz. On Friday, mourners attending her funeral at Tabriz’s Vadi Rahmat Cemetery have been attacked by Iranian safety forces.
Movies posted on-line present safety forces on bikes beating mourners and protesters who are heard chanting anti-government slogans reminiscent of “we’re all Aylars, we are going to struggle again,” “the individuals of Azerbaijan is not going to tolerate this oppression” in addition to the favored slogan of “freedom, justice and nationwide authorities.”
By Saturday, protesters angered by Haqqi’s dying took to the streets of Tabriz, in addition to town of Malekan (regionally often called Melikkendi), Haqqi’s hometown positioned south of Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province.
Iran Wire, a diaspora information web site run by journalists outdoors Iran utilizing social media and different content material from citizen journalists from contained in the nation, reported on Sunday that dozens have been arrested within the provinces of East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan and Ardabil, after calls to carry memorials for these killed in anti-government protests. Iran Wire printed names of greater than 40 Azerbaijani Turks who have been detained by Iranian safety forces within the cities of Tabriz, Melikkendi, Urmia, Khoy and Ardabil up to now few days.
Iranian authorities proceed to assert the continued protests are being backed by outdoors “enemies” together with the USA, France and different European international locations. In remarks Sunday printed by the IRNA state information company, President Ebrahim Raisi mentioned authorities are taking steps geared toward “nullifying the seditions plotted overseas.”
The U.S., Canada, Britain and the European Union have introduced sanctions towards these behind the crackdown on protesters. Nonetheless, they’ve declined to go together with some protesters’ calls to chop ties fully with Tehran.
Twitter feed charts political divides
Iran’s state information company IRNA claimed that Haqqi died after falling right into a building pit. Nonetheless, one among her shut family advised RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that Haqqi was shot from behind by safety forces when she took half in protests in Tabriz.
Posts on her Twitter account from the final two years (the place she printed beneath the nickname “Ay Yuzlu” which means “moon-faced” in Turkish), present she spoke out on girls’s rights, in addition to different social, political and human rights points confronted by Iranian individuals, and by the Azerbaijani Turks specifically.
Up to now couple of months, Haqqi had been tweeting in assist of the nationwide protests that erupted after the dying of Mahsa Amini, whose dying whereas being detained by Iran’s morality police sparked nationwide protests.
In her last tweet, apparently posted shortly earlier than her dying Wednesday night, Haqqi wrote, “In Tabriz, all of the retailers have been closed aside from Lara [women’s clothing store],” referring to the nationwide strike in protest of Iran’s violent crackdown.
She tweeted in assist of anti-government protests in earlier years as properly.
In July 2021, hours after a gathering that came about in Tabriz in solidarity with protests over water shortages in Iran’s Arab-populated Khuzestan province, Haqqi tweeted, “Azerbaijan is aware of properly when to not be silent.”
Haqqi made notable efforts on social media to study writing in her native language, which is banned from being taught within the Iranian colleges.
“I’ve been pondering for a number of days that one thing is lacking. Now, I bear in mind, I’ve not tweeted in Turkish for very long time. Even when I get fewer likes, that is my mom tongue,” she tweeted in December 2020.
A day after Haqqi’s dying, Ruzbeh Saadati, a former political prisoner and civil rights activist residing within the Azerbaijani-Turkish-populated metropolis of Zanjan, quoted her tweet, stating that “sooner or later, colleges will likely be constructed and books will likely be printed in Aylar Haqqi’s mom tongue, however does her tweet not deserve our likes immediately?”
The Turks are Iran’s largest linguistic minority, residing primarily in Iranian Azerbaijan bordered by the nations of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The federal government of Iran has by no means printed official statistics on the inhabitants of the nation’s ethnic and linguistic teams. Nonetheless, throughout his official go to to Turkey in January 2011, then-Iranian Overseas Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that 40% of Iranians converse Turkish.
Most Azerbaijani Turks are Shia Muslims, which is the official state faith of Iran, however they’ve lengthy been barred from schooling of their native tongue.
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