Civil Activists Protest Government Violence in Saravan; Amnesty International Calls for Independent Investigation
A number of Iranian civil and political activists issued a statement in response to the recent violent events in Saravan, calling on the Iranian government to hold the families of those killed accountable and to end the security conditions in the region.
Amnesty International also issued a statement on Tuesday, March 3, accusing the Revolutionary Guards of violating international law and illegally using deadly weapons against fuel consumers.
The unrest in Saravan city began on March 25 when IRGC officers opened fire on fuel tankers protesting the new restrictions, killing and wounding some of them. On March 26, some Saravan residents attacked the Saravan governor's office in protest of the killing of fuel tankers, but were met with a police attack.
The statement by civil society activists, signed by figures such as Parasto Forouhar, Jafar Panahi, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Narges Mohammadi, Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Zia Nabavi, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Kazem Alamdari, addressed the spread of general poverty in Sistan and Baluchestan province, a province that "has the highest rates of unemployment, malnutrition, and dropouts."
The statement says: "In an environment where general poverty has spread rapidly in the Balochistan region due to the lack of industrial and commercial infrastructure and the recent droughts, segments of the poorest social strata have been forced to burn fuel to survive and escape hunger. Their lives are constantly at risk due to the pursuit and escape of law enforcement and military forces, accidents, overturning, and fires, and thus they are being targeted."
Iranian government officials initially claimed that some fuel tankers were killed by Pakistani officers, but a local Pakistani official, in an interview with Radio Farda, denied that the country's border guards had fired on the fuel tankers.
Meanwhile, the governor of Sistan and Baluchestan has also cited "enemy plots" and "fake news from hostile media" as factors behind the spread of the protests, justifying the clashes with the protests and the security situation in the region.
The signatories of this statement, however, "concerned about the continuation of security policies and possible repression in the region" and emphasizing "the adoption of plans to improve the livelihoods of the Baloch people," have called for "the region to emerge from the current security situation as soon as possible, and for the guilty officials who led to the initial incident and subsequent events to be identified and the necessary legal action to be taken."
On the other hand, Amnesty International issued a statement saying that the Revolutionary Guards used deadly weapons in an attack on a group of unarmed fuel tankers, which resulted in the killing and wounding of several members of the Baloch minority.
Citing statistics from Baloch human rights activists, the organization said that at least 10 people, including a 17-year-old boy, were killed in the incident.
Amnesty International has finally called for an independent investigation into this matter.
Source: Radio Farda
