Angry Mourners Gather At Amini’s Grave, Defying Heightened Security

Anti-government protesters are back to the streets across Iran on Wednesday to mark the 40th day since Mahsa Amini’s death, despite heavy presence of security and intelligence forces as part of a heavy-handed crackdown on rallies.

Videos shared online showed dozens of people gathered at Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, Amini’s hometown in the western province of Kurdistan, shouting “Kurdistan Kurdistan, the graveyard of fascists” and “Death to the dictator,” in reference to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iranian security forces have opened fire on protesters who had gathered in their thousands in Mahsa Amini’s hometown to mark 40 days since her death, a human rights group has said.

Protests flare across Iran in violent unrest over Mahsa Amini’s death

Protests raged for a fourth straight day across Iran on Tuesday and authorities said three people had been killed during unrest over the death of a Kurdish young woman in police custody.

The death last week of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who was arrested by morality police for “unsuitable attire” unleashed a flood of simmering anger over numerous issues including rights, security and an economy reeling from international sanctions.

It is some of Iran’s worst unrest since street clashes last year over water shortages. The Iranian government accuses foreign agents and unspecified terrorists of instigating the violence.

Kurdistan and Balochistan: Is National Self-Determination a Left/Right Issue?

Is the left becoming suspicious of the idea of self-determination for stateless ethnic groups, just as the right warms up to it?

by: Martin W. Lewis

I have been wondering for some time how the issue of self-determination for so-called stateless nations fits into the standard, one-dimensional political spectrum. Historically, those on the left have been more favorably disposed to “national liberation struggles” than those on the right, who have more often advocated stability and the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo. By the same token, most of the best-known groups of the late 20th century that sought the independence of their homelands staked out positions on the left, and often on the far left. Prominent examples here include the Kurdish separatists in Turkey, Catalan and Basque separatists in Spain, and Quebecois separatists in Canada. Even support for Scottish independence tilts left, and I suspect that most international advocates of a “Free Tibet” lean in the same direction.

Iran’s ‘moderate’ Rohani intensifies executions in Balochistan and Kurdistan

Zahedan: 8 people sentenced to death on charges of drug trafficking have reportedly been executed in Yazd prison whereas at least five people have been hanged in the central prison of Zahedan in Iranian occupied Balochistan on 21 September.

According to the Public Relations Attorney General of Yazd province, two death sentences for those convicted of these 8 persons have been ratified by the Attorney General’s request for commutation and pardon convicts Judiciary Committee rejected and eventually the death penalty in the morning of Thursday 19 September was carried out.