WASHINGTON: The US yesterday urged Iranian security forces to exercise restraint in dealing with protests that have swept the country and called on Tehran to restore access to social media sites that have been restricted.
“When a nation clamps down on social media or websites or Google or news sites, we ask the question: What are you afraid of? ... We support the Iranian people and we support their voices being heard,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
Restoring social media “would certainly be an important thing for them to do,” Nauert said.
The estimated death toll is now 21 since protests began in the second city of Mashhad and quickly spread to become the biggest challenge to the regime since mass demonstrations in 2009.
Riot police were out in force in several cities on the sixth day of protests, which spread to the northwestern city of Tabriz, according to social media posts.
More than 450 protesters have been arrested in the capital in the last three days, and hundreds of others were detained around the country. A judicial official said some could face the death penalty.
In the southwestern city of Ahvaz, police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators.
“Police shot tear gas and later went around asking shops on two main streets to close, to completely clear the area,” a resident said.
Nine people were killed in Isfahan province during protests on Monday night, including a young member of the Revolutionary Guards and a policeman, state TV said.
Six protesters were killed during an attack on a police station in the town of Qahderijan in Isfahan. More than 100 were detained in Isfahan. The local governor said the protesters were armed.
Steve Goldstein, the State Department’s under-secretary for public diplomacy, denounced Iran’s attempts to restrict Internet access and urged Iranians to find a way to log in.
He advised Iranian citizens to set up virtual private networks, or VPNs, to circumvent online censorship.
“People in Iran should be able to access these sites through VPN,” he said, adding that the State Department’s own Farsi language Facebook page has around 700,000 subscribers.
“The more available these sites are the better it is,” he said, as street protests continued against what US President Donald Trump has branded Iran’s “brutal and corrupt” regime.
Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Tehran since the latest protests began, praised the demonstrators for acting against the “brutal and corrupt” regime and said Iranians had “little food, big inflation and no human rights”.
Trump’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said the US would seek emergency UN talks on the situation.
“The people of Iran are crying out for freedom,” she said at a news conference. “All freedom-loving people must stand with their cause.”
Haley praised the courage of Iranian demonstrators and said protests across the country were spontaneous, not driven by outside forces.
“The freedoms that are enshrined in the United Nations charter are under attack in Iran. Dozens have already been killed. Hundreds have been arrested,” she said. “If the Iranian dictatorship’s history is any guide, we can expect more outrageous abuses in the days to come.”
Canada and France also urged Iranian authorities to respect the rights of protesters and uphold and respect democratic and human rights.