Unrest Among Iran’s Ethnic Minorities Tests Government

As Iran attempts to suppress rights protests across the country, another front of resistance has opened up in far-flung ethnic enclaves, where security forces in the past week killed more than 80 in the country’s remotest and poorest province, residents and activists say.

Unrest in Sistan-Baluchistan and other provinces, which are home to ethnic minorities, poses a tricky challenge for the government, as it seeks to prevent the movement from spreading out of control without stoking further anger.

Authorities have heavily restricted internet access in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, but residents and the rights group Amnesty International now say that at least 66 people were killed in a single incident on Friday last week in the province’s capital, Zahedan.

Security forces opened fire on people moving from Friday prayer toward the city’s main police station to demand justice for a 15-year-old girl allegedly raped by a police officer. To confront the protesters, police used live ammunition, metal pellets and tear gas, they said.

Since then, at least 16 more people have been killed in clashes with the security forces, the residents and activists said. 

The government has also responded with violent force in other remote regions of Iran with large ethnic minorities, including Khuzestan in the southwest and Kurdistan in the northwest.

Sistan-Baluchistan is home to a majority of Iran’s Baloch population of more than two million, while Khuzestan is where most of Iran’s more than 1.5 million ethnic Arabs live. Kurdistan is home to a majority of the country’s roughly 10 million Kurds.

All three ethnic groups complain of government discrimination and neglect, with some wanting more autonomy for their region. Sistan-Baluchistan is Iran’s poorest province, and most neglected in terms of education, health and social benefits. Security forces regularly clash with groups they accuse of separatism and terrorism.

In 2019 in Khuzestan, more than 300 people were killed by security forces in a crackdown on protests prompted mostly by economic hardship, according to Amnesty International.

Poor telecommunications infrastructure makes it easier for the government to suppress information in Sistan-Baluchistan, but the clashes there at this time appear to be deadlier than in other places.  

As government violence continues to fuel public anger across Iran, unrest in the provinces will stretch the security forces thin and make it hard for the government in Tehran to curtail protests that have become “truly national”, according to Roham Alvandi, associate professor at the London School of Economics with expertise in Iranian history.

“We have seen protests in cities large and small, which will prove impossible for the regime to control as waves of protest ebb and flow,” he said.

Protests in Iran erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained in Tehran for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. Ms. Amini was Kurdish. Her death last month immediately caused unrest in Kurdistan and quickly spread to other parts of the country.

Hundreds of people in Zahedan gathered after Friday prayer on Sept. 30 to demand justice for a 15-year-old girl who had allegedly been raped by a police commander in the nearby port city of Chabahar. When the crowd began moving toward the main police station, security forces opened fire on them from rooftops, residents said. The forces also opened fire near the mosque, where hundreds of people, including children, were still praying, they said.

Angry residents clashed with Revolutionary Guard forces in the streets around the mosque where some were shot at by helicopters, residents said. Some banks, a supermarket owned by the Revolutionary Guard and other shops were set on fire in the riots, they added.

Amnesty International said it has gathered the names of at least 66 protesters and bystanders who were killed, but expects the actual death toll is higher. The rights group said at least 16 other people have been killed since then in a continuing crackdown on protests. A local activist group, HAAL Vash, has compiled the names of 91 fatalities, often including pictures and footage of the moment they were shot. 

Amnesty said it had evidence that the majority of victims were shot in the head, heart, neck and torso, which it said revealed “a clear intent to kill or seriously harm.”

A local doctor, Ashkan Pooyan, said on Instagram that he confirmed several victims had been shot from behind in the head. Mr. Pooyan’s Instagram account has since been scrubbed of content, and activists say he hasn’t been heard from.

Iranian authorities have said 19 people were killed, including four security forces, and that they were shot by terrorists that came across the Iran-Pakistan border, a claim local residents and activists deny.

Accounts of the crackdown were corroborated by footage showing men walking toward the police station and bloodied protesters being carried to the mosque, while shots were still ringing out. The footage was verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. Images from videos posted by HAAL Vash and Amnesty International show members of the security forces holding guns or firing towards protesters from rooftops.