WWhilst protests in Iran continue, clashes and a fire have broken out at a prison in Tehran notorious for the mistreatment of political prisoners. A video released by the human rights organization Iran Human Rights showed flames and a cloud of smoke over the Ewin prison in the Iranian capital on Saturday evening, and shots were apparently heard. “Death to the Dictator” chants could be heard in the background of the video.
The jail is reported to be holding hundreds of people arrested during the month-long protests for human and civil rights. Several foreigners are also detained there.
“A fire is spreading in Ewin prison,” said the Twitter channel 1500tasvir, which regularly reports on the protests and police violence in Iran. There was also an explosion.
The state news agency Irna reported “riots and clashes” at the prison. “Riots” had started an altercation with prison employees and set fire to the detention center’s textile warehouse. However, the situation is “completely under control” again, and “calm has returned” to the detention center. According to the report, at least eight people were injured.
Take care of foreign prisoners too
Iran has been rocked by violent protests for weeks. They were triggered by the death of the young Kurd Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old died in Tehran on September 16 after being arrested by the vice squad three days earlier on charges of not wearing her headscarf in accordance with regulations.
Several foreign nationals are also being held in Ewin Prison. Responding to reports of the unrest and fire, the family of American citizen Siamak Namazi said they were “deeply concerned” and had not heard from Namazi. The sister of another American detained in the jail wrote on Twitter that she was “worry sick”.
A spokesman for the US State Department said Washington was following the incident closely. Iran is “fully responsible for the safety of our illegally detained citizens”.
“Guns are being fired while Ewin burns,” researcher Roham Alvandi of the London School of Economics wrote on Twitter. “Should political prisoners perish there, it will be an incident on the scale of the ‘Cinema Rex’ fire in Abadan in August 1978, which hastened the overthrow of the Shah.”
Around 400 people died in an arson attack on the “Cinema Rex”. The incident on the eve of the Iranian revolution sparked protests against the shah, even though the background to the attack was never clarified.
“The mullahs should go away!”
There were protests again in Iran on Saturday. At a demonstration at Shariati University in the capital Tehran, women without headscarves shouted slogans such as “The mullahs should go away!”, according to a video distributed on the Internet. Further protests were reported from Isfahan and Kermanshah, among others.
According to 1500tasvir, young women at a college in Tehran shouted “freedom, freedom, freedom” while waving their headscarves in the air. The Twitter channel also reported on striking shopkeepers in Kurdistan Province and West Azerbaijan.
Because of the violent crackdown on demonstrators in Iran, the EU countries had agreed on new sanctions against Tehran. According to diplomatic circles, the EU foreign ministers are to officially decide on the punitive measures at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
