Protests continue, pensioners face empty funerals; internet service disrupted in some cities
Protests continued in various cities in Iran on Sunday, June 10, with a group of industrial workers, as well as merchants and marketers, walking off the job in some cities. On the other hand, a number of retirees held rallies in various provinces and chanted slogans against government policies.
According to citizen reports and videos published on social media, on Sunday, retirees and pensioners took to the streets in at least the cities of Rasht, Sari, Kermanshah, Ahvaz, Arak, Shush, Shushtar, and Dorud.
The retired protesters chanted slogans including "Lying president, where are your promises?", "Yesterday's fighters, today's hungry people?", "Scream, from all this violence!", "We will not live under oppression, we will sacrifice our lives for freedom," and "Woe to this situation."
The empty table of retirees was also symbolically laid for the umpteenth time in recent days, this time in Kermanshah, in protest of the living conditions.
In Arak, the capital of Markazi Province, in addition to widespread protests by retirees and their chanting of slogans, a number of merchants and marketers went on strike by closing their shops in protest of the excessive tax increase.
Reports indicate that the second day of the stonecutters' strike in the Mahmoudabad Industrial Park in Khomeini Shahr.
Citizen videos also show a sit-in and large gathering of road workers on Damascus Street in Tehran in front of the road department.
At the same time, reports of disruptions in mobile internet have been transmitted in some cities in Iran.
As protests by various popular groups in Iran escalated, Habib Afkari, a civil activist and brother of Navid Afkari, a protesting wrestler who was executed, announced in a message, a copy of which was also received by Voice of America: "Now that businessmen in markets and industrial towns, like teachers, retirees, and workers, have joined nationwide strikes and protests in response to the government's economic policies, and have announced with their cries that they are no longer willing to tolerate the current conditions, it is an important and necessary step for all groups and guilds to join the nationwide strikes."
In this message, which was also echoed on his brother Saeed Afkari's Twitter, he attributed "inflation, rent, taxes, livelihood security, water shortages, health costs, and unemployment" to "corruption, hypocrisy, lies, and the insignificance of human life in the Islamic Republic's governance."
Forty days after the start of the new policy package of Ebrahim Raisi's government, which is being referred to as "economic surgery," the reduction in people's purchasing power has led to widespread protests, but Ebrahim Raisi's spokesman says that people must "endure and be patient" in order to achieve economic treatment and reform.
