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© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, in Tehran, Iran, September 19, 2022. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
DUBAI, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Protesters chanted chants of denunciation of Iran’s supreme leader in the country’s troubled southeast on Friday, while a human rights group said at least 100 detained protesters faced possible death sentences. .
Demonstrations have been taking place across the country since mid-September against the clerical leadership, following the death in prison of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, detained for wearing “inappropriate attire” under the strict Islamic dress code for women.
“Death to the dictator, death to Khamenei,” the protesters chanted in reference to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a video broadcast on social networks from Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province. Images that Reuters could not verify.
This impoverished province is home to Iran’s Baloch minority, made up of some two million people, who human rights groups say have suffered discrimination and repression for decades.
Some of the worst unrest in recent months has occurred in areas where minority ethnic and religious groups reside and have long been at odds with the state, such as in Sistan-Balochistan and the Kurdish regions.
The protests, in which demonstrators from all walks of life have called for the end of Iran’s ruling theocracy, have posed one of the biggest challenges to the Shiite Muslim-ruled Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.
THE CENTRAL BANK WILL SUPPORT THE CURRENCY
Since the protests began more than three months ago, the Iranian currency has lost a quarter of its value and plunged to record lows on the unofficial free-floating market as desperate Iranians have bought US dollars and to protect their savings from 50% inflation.
On Friday, the new governor of the country’s central bank, Mohammad Reza Farzin, told state television that the bank would intervene in the foreign exchange market to support the rial.
“The (current) exchange rate is distorted…and of course we will intervene in the free market,” said Farzin, who was appointed on Thursday.
Separately, a human rights group claimed that at least 100 protesters detained in Iran face possible death sentences.
(Reporting by the Dubai newsroom; edited in Spanish by Aida Peláez-Fernández)
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