Trump says world 'has to be watching' the violence in Iran
- par Thibaud Popelin
- dans Monde
- — Déc 3, 2019
The new toll ups the number of deaths according to Amnesty International by nearly 50 as the organisation urges the international community to ensure those responsible are held accountable. "Those responsible for this bloody clampdown on demonstrations must be held accountable for their actions", he said.
Speaking in London, where he is attending the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation leaders summit, Trump said, "Iran is killing thousands and thousands of people right now as we speak". Iranian leaders have refused to acknowledge those killings ever since.
Iran has but to launch any nationwide statistics over the unrest that gripped the Islamic Republic starting November 15 with minimal costs for government-subsidized gasoline rising by 50 p.c.
Iran shut down internet access to the outside world amid the unrest.
Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, did not provide a new official death toll when asked at a news conference broadcast by state news agency Irna on Sunday. Iran's week-long Internet outage made it even harder to assess the loss of life.
"But many, many people are being killed in Iran right now for protesting". It has disputed Amnesty's death toll reports as speculative but released none of its own figures for killed and wounded protesters. Mills said there was a "general environment of fear inside of Iran at the moment". "It's something pretty unprecedented event in the history of the human rights violations in" Iran. It said it then crosschecked the information.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday denounced Iran's crackdown on anti-government protesters, as rights groups said the death toll had soared. "We try to contact family members if we can, but it's really hard to speak to them, because mobile networks in some regions have not come back online and a lot of people are scared to talk to us".
"Some families are also being forced to make extortionate payments to have the bodies of their loved ones returned to them", the watchdog said.
Over 200 protesters reportedly killed in Iran; Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad speaks out.
Whereas not drawing as many Iranians into the streets as these protesting the disputed 2009 presidential election, the gasoline worth demonstrations quickly turned violent quicker than any earlier rallies.
Iranian state television on Tuesday acknowledged security forces shot and killed what it described as "rioters" in multiple cities amid recent protests over the spike in government-set gasoline prices - the first time that authorities have offered any sort of accounting for the violence they used to put down the demonstrations.
The new toll ups the number of deaths according to Amnesty by nearly 50, with the organisation saying dozens were recorded in Shahriar city in Tehran province, "one of the cities with the highest death tolls".
"The deaths have resulted nearly entirely from the use of firearms", Amnesty has said.
Online videos purportedly from the area showed peaceful protests, as well as clashes between demonstrators and security forces.
In one case, the report said security forces confronted a separatist group in the city of Mahshahr armed with "semi-heavy weapons".
Amnesty researcher Sam Dubberly, who leads its digital verification team, told VOA Persian that it comprises around 80 to 120 students from universities in the U.S., Britain, Canada and South Africa.
"The names they have given are also lies", Esmaili said, adding they included people who were still alive and others who passed away of natural causes. "We like to triangulate the evidence", he said.
"For hours, armed rioters had waged an armed struggle", the report said.
