Nationwide protests against the government of former President Hassan Rouhani erupted in Iran in November of 2019, following a surge in the price of petrol. Some 1,500 protesters were killed by Iranian security forces during the November demonstrations, making it the bloodiest anti-regime movement in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Footage published on Telegram channels from the country’s western Kurdish areas (Rojhelat) depicted general strikes at bazaars in the cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Sanandaj, Saqqez, Tabriz, Baneh, Mahabad, Marivan, Piranshar, Oshnavieh, Divandarreh, Javanrud, Ilam, Kermanshah, among others.
“The stores and bazaars are 100 percent closed,” Syko*, a citizen from Mahabad, told Rudaw English on Tuesday, “everyone is sitting at home, and there are no open places apart from pharmacies and bakeries.”
The recent Iranian attacks targeting the bases of exiled Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region are also a factor driving the strikes, particularly in the west of the country.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted bases of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) near Erbil’s Koya and Komala in Sulaimani’s Zargwez with missiles and drones on Monday, killing at least two and injuring eight others.
Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region have waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since 1979.
General strikes have been held across Rojhelat in the past two months, with the first taking place two days after Mahsa (Zhina) Amini’s death while in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Amini’s death ignited an unprecedented nationwide protest movement that has brought Iranians from all corners together to call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime.
The Iranian authorities have threatened to take more extreme approaches against the protesters if the demonstrations continue.
Videos circulated on social media on Tuesday, showing clashes between students and security forces at a university in Tehran.
Tehran has violently cracked down on the protests, killing at least 344 protesters and bystanders, including 52 children, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).
