An artist dyed the water in Tehran’s public fountains on Friday to depict the Islamic Republic’s brutal assault on protest movements over the past several weeks, against the backdrop of the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who was slain while being imprisoned by the “moral police.”
There has been unrest in Iran ever since it became known that the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman had passed away on September 16 as a result of her detention in Tehran for violating the veil’s rules.
Her death sparked the biggest demonstrations in Iran in almost three years, a rise in public outrage, and a crackdown that led to the deaths of dozens of protesters and the detention of hundreds more.
AFP-verified video evidence shows that the protests persisted for 20 straight days despite the security forces’ use of fatal force to try to put an end to them.
The “1500 Filming” channel, which tracks human rights abuses in Iran, posted images of fountains with reddened water on its Twitter account.
In the heart of Tehran, near “Fatimi Square,” “Park Daneshjou,” and “Khaneh Hanarmandan,” you may find the fountains that are most frequently observed.
Tweeting about the blood-red water fountains as “artworks” titled “Tehran covered in blood,” protestors noted that they were created by an unidentified artist.
The Human Rights Organization in Iran, based in Oslo, estimates that at least 92 people were killed in Iran during the crackdown on protests that lasted for more than two weeks and included the imposition of strict Internet restrictions, including the banning of the platforms “Instagram” and “WhatsApp.”
Security forces in Iran detained famous protesters, including activists, journalists, and singers.
However, protests persisted in a number of Iranian cities and towns in spite of these measures.
A group of young women can be heard yelling “Death to the dictator” in a video that was made in Rasht, a city in northern Iran, and broadcast on Thursday.
In other independently verified recordings, ladies could be heard chanting “Azadi,” which is Farsi for “freedom,” as they marched down a street in Quds, a city west of the capital.
Amnesty International reported that it has evidence of 52 people being killed by Iranian security forces, but it expressed concern that “the true death toll is significantly higher.”
The London-based human rights group said that the Iranian government was using fatal force to put down rallies headed by women in a statement released a week ago.
According to Amnesty, on September 21, a leaked official document requesting that officers in charge of the armed forces in the provinces “act brutally” to the protesters was obtained.
According to the NGO, the commander of the armed forces in the province of Mazandaran, where some of the most violent conflicts occurred, ordered the security forces to “react to any demonstration of rioters severely, including inflicting murder.”
Watch as an Iranian artist depicts the blood of demonstrators in Tehran’s fountains.
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