iranian women protest against tv pirates

Protests continue unabated in Iran nearly a month after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Police repression mainly targets women, students and young people.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the police under the orders of the Islamic dictatorial theocracy would have proceeded to a raid among young pupils of a school in Iran. According to testimonies quoted by the newspaper, the security forces, arriving in vans without license plates, arrested the students and took them away. Authorities have also closed all schools and higher education institutions in Iranian Kurdistan, Mahsa Amini’s home region. Instead, two members of the security forces were killed, according to state media.

Photo Ansa

Protest breaks out on TV

All happening as anti-regime protests following the death of Mahsa Amini – the girl who died in police custody after Iran’s moral police arrested her for ‘wearing the veil incorrectly’ – enter the fourth week . And they continue with force, even at the cyber level. On October 9, a group of cybercriminals supporting the protests in Iran managed to hack into a public television channel. And it broadcast an image of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – surrounded by flames, in the middle of a television news.

“The blood of our youth flows from your fingers,” read a message that appeared on screen during Iran’s state television Tg. The message was accompanied by a manipulated photo of Khamenei with his body surrounded by flames and his head in a viewfinder. “It’s time to put your furniture away (…) and find another place for your family outside of Iran,” read another message accompanying the photo. To claim responsibility for the cyberattack, which lasted a few seconds, was a group calling itself Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice) and supporting the ongoing protest movement (mainly led by women.)

Paris, demonstrations against Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini. Photo Ansa / Epa Christophe Petit Tesson

Iran, the strongest anger since 2019

It is the largest protest in Iran since the one against the rise in the price of gasoline in 2019. Several foreign Persian-language media shared a video showing the cyberattack. At the end of the video, the news anchor is seen taking on a tense expression, his eyes fixed on the camera. In Iran, the Tasnim news agency confirmed that state television had been “hacked for a few moments by anti-revolutionary agents”. The facts take place during the time when Italy is trying to bring home the Roman travel blogger Alessia Piperno. The young woman, 30, is a prisoner of the Iranian police for unknown and probably totally arbitrary reasons. In recent days, the father’s desperate appeal: “Help us save her”.

One of the recent protests in Tehran. Photo Ansa