In a statement, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights strongly condemned the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so called “morality police” in Iran and called for an end to violence against women.
Since mid September, thousands of people have come to the streets in many cities including Tehran, Ilam, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Mahabad, Saqqez, Sanandaj, Sari and Tabriz to protest the death of Mahsa Amini and call for an end to violence and discrimination against women. People on the streets have also chanted against the Islamic Republic system as a whole and its leadership.
Following the protests, broad internet outages have been reported in Tehran, Kurdistan and other parts of the country. This is the third widespread internet outage in Iran in the last 12 months.
Netblocks, the global internet monitoring company, announced on Wednesday this week that Iran’s mobile phone networks are largely closed and access to Instagram and WhatsApp is limited. The company reported the second widespread outage in Iran on Thursday.
In a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi claimed that the initial forensic investigation into Amini’s death shows that she died of heart failure or a stroke and not any violence by the morality police.
Protesters reject the government’s conclusion and point to reports that police officers hit Mahsa Amini on the head with a baton and slammed her head into one of their cars.