Fresh Anti-Government Protests Take Place In Iran, Despite Widening Crackdown

Students from Iranian universities staged fresh demonstrations while many shopkeepers went on strike on November 5, despite a widening crackdown by authorities as protests that flared over the death of a 22-year-old woman in police custody entered an eighth week.

Mahsa Amini died in mid-September after being arrested by Iran's notorious morality police for “improperly" wearing a mandatory Islamic head scarf, or hijab.

Her death, which officials blamed on a heart attack, sparked a wave of anti-government protests in cities across the country met by authorities with a harsh crackdown that the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights says has killed at least 277 people, including 40 children.

Security forces adopted new measures to halt protests at universities in the capital, Tehran, on November 5, searching students and forcing them to remove face masks, activists said.

Students were subjected to dress-code inspections at the north Tehran branch of Azad University and at the Sharif University of Technology, a leading higher education institution and traditionally a hotbed for dissent.

Students were seen demonstrating and chanting, "I am a free woman, you are the pervert," at Islamic Azad University of Mashhad, in northeast Iran, in a video published by BBC Persian.

"A student dies, but doesn't accept humiliation," sang students at Gilan University in the northern city of Rasht, in footage posted online by an activist.

Dozens were heard chanting similar slogans at a mourning ceremony 40 days after the death of protester Javad Heydari in the northwestern city of Qazvin.

People were observing a "widespread strike" in Amini's home town of Saqez, in Iran's Kurdistan Province, where shops were shuttered, according to the Norway-based Hengaw rights group.

Foreign ministers from the G7 group of nations on November 4 condemned Tehran's response to the wave of protests.

"We further condemn the brutal and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters," the ministers said in a statement after two days of talks in the German city of Muenster.

With reporting by AFP