Iran’s Balochistan Under Lockdown, Blackout In Wake Of ‘Bloody Friday’

(RFE/RL) — As scattered anti-government and anti-hijab protests continue across Iran, members of one beleaguered ethnic and religious minority who joined in the demonstrations are still assessing the toll from “Bloody Friday.”

Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, was the scene of the violent crackdown carried out by security forces on September 30 that observers say left more than 90 people dead — and possibly scores more.

The victims were overwhelmingly Baloch — a mostly Sunni ethnic group that makes up the majority in the impoverished region, and who have long faced disproportionate discrimination at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

Essentially bogus

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

… Each, though there was more than enough for all, was desirous of appropriating part to himself. Then entered violence, and fraud, and theft, and rapine. Soon after, pride and envy broke out in the world and brought with them a new standard of wealth; for men, who till then, thought themselves rich when they wanted nothing, now rated their demands, not by the calls of nature, but by the plenty of others; and began to consider themselves poor, when they beheld their own possessions exceeded by those of their neighbours. — Dr. Samuel Johnson

THE ever-escalating violence, chaos and corruption plaguing us permanently are the overt symptoms of a social meltdown triggered by the incorrigibly corrupt, utterly inefficient and morally bankrupt ruling elite. Its insatiable greed for pelf and power is responsible for the destruction of the norms and values which once provided cohesion to society. As a class it is “essentially bogus”, as Gore Vidal once called the Kennedy family.

Oct 17: Martyrs of Gishkoor