Workers at the site of a major complex of refineries crucial for Iran's massive offshore natural gas field protested Monday over the death of a 22-year-old woman, online videos appeared to show.
The demonstrations at Asaluyeh mark the first time the unrest surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini threatened the coffers of Iran's long-sanctioned theocratic government -- its oil and gas industry.
From the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere, online videos have emerged despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos on Monday showed university and high school students demonstrating and chanting, with some women and girls marching through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran's theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.
"This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown," the protesters chanted, refusing to use the title ayatollah to refer to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. An ayatollah is a high-ranking Shiite cleric. The violence early Monday in western Iran occurred in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran's Kurdistan province, as well as in the village of Salas Babajani near the border with Iraq, according to a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran's Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there.
Authorities offered no immediate explanation about the violence early Monday in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometres west of Tehran. Esmail Zarei Kousha, the governor of Iran's Kurdistan province, alleged without providing evidence that unknown groups "plotted to kill young people on the streets" on Saturday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Monday.
It remains unclear how many people have been killed in the demonstrations or by the security force crackdown targeting them. State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. In the over two weeks since, there's been no update from Iran's government.
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