Association for the Human Rights of the Azerbaijani People in Iran: March 2023 Annual Report
From the report's introduction:
The large-scale protests raged in Iran after Mahsa Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, after the death custody of the Morality police. The protests quickly spread nationwide, and only in the first days did about 100 cities and towns join the protests. Although the protests were triggered by violating women’s rights regarding mandatory hijab, many factors, such as economic hardship and lack of freedom of speech, contributed to the protests.
As in the years before, the Iranian government’s approach to peaceful protests was suppression with disproportionate measures, which resulted in the death of many protesters. The protests lasted more than 100 days. During this period, the intelligence and security agents, IRGC, and Basij forces committed violations of various human rights despite the protesters having the right to peaceful protests.
Countrywide, more than 500 protesters died, and more than 80000 were arrested. However, the human rights groups could only identify 4920 victims, from which 969 confirmed cases were Azerbaijanis. The number of arrests among Azerbaijanis was significantly higher than the confirmed cases. According to trusted sources, the number of arrests in the first weeks of the protests in Tabriz and Zanjan, two major cities of Azerbaijan, was more than 3000 individuals. Figure 2.1 depicts the number of arrests by provinces. East and west Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Zanjan, Qazvin, and part of Hamadan provinces are considered Azerbaijan mainly populated by Azerbaijani Turks. As shown in figure 2.1, Azerbaijan was among one of the regions in which number of arrests was very high…
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