A full 15 days after violence, murder, and massacres were first visited on anti-Islamic regime protesters in Iran, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has acted. He said Sunday he is “shocked” by actions against freedom fighters and called for calm restraint.
Guterres, a former Portuguese Socialist Party leader and prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, “is shocked by the reports of violence and excessive use of force by the Iranian authorities against protesters,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric says in a statement, adding a call “to exercise maximum restraint and to refrain from unnecessary or disproportionate use of force.”
“All Iranians must be able to express their grievances peacefully and without fear,” Guterres’ spokesperson added via an issued statement.
“The rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as enshrined in international law, must be fully respected and protected.”
More than 500 protests have so far taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Monday per FRANCE24.
The death toll had reached at least 544, it said, with more than 10,600 arrests.
Warnings are growing that authorities were committing a “massacre” to quell the demonstrations.
The protests, initially sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, have now become a movement against the theocratic system in place in Iran since the 1979 revolution and have already lasted two weeks.
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The mass rallies are one of the biggest challenges to the rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, coming in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June, which was backed by the United States.
Meanwhile on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump continued his vocal public support for Iran’s protesters in a flurry of posts, declaring that the country was “looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before,” and warning the regime that the United States was watching closely as demonstrations expanded despite a sweeping communications blackout.
As Breitbart News reported, the latest escalation followed remarks Friday by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicting Trump would be “brought down,” even as rights groups warned of a mounting death toll and described a “massacre” unfolding amid mass arrests and lethal force used against demonstrators — conditions Trump has repeatedly said would trigger a U.S. response.
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