Around 50 police have been killed in the protests shaking Iran since September, the deputy foreign minister said on Thursday, giving a first official death toll amid an intensified crackdown on Kurdish areas in recent days.
Iranian security forces have clashed with protesters across the country, with the U.N. rights commission saying more than 300 demonstrators have been killed since the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16
Iran’s clerical rulers have recently hardened the crackdown in Kurdish areas, with the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights spokesperson Jeremy Laurence saying on Tuesday there were reports of more than 40 killed there over the past week.
A parliament member from the mainly Kurdish city of Mahabad said the judiciary had issued him a repeated summons for his support of protesters.
“The judiciary has raised a complaint against me as a representative of the mourning people instead of conserving the legal rights of the protesting people and the families of victims in Mahabad and Kurdish cities,” Jalal Mahmoudzadeh tweeted on Wednesday.
Prominent Sunni Muslim cleric Molavi Abdulhamid, who has been outspoken in criticising the treatment of Iran’s mostly Sunni ethnic minorities by the mainly Shi’ite ruling elite, tweeted on Wednesday against the crackdown in Kurdish areas.
“The dear Kurds of Iran have endured many sufferings, such as severe ethnic discrimination, severe religious pressure, poverty and economic hardships. Is it to respond to their protest with war bullets?” tweeted Molavi.
The United States has sanctioned three Iranian security officials over the crackdown in Kurdish-majority areas, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday