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Iran to reject newly appointed independent UN probe The country’s crackdown on anti-government protests is being investigated, the foreign ministry said on Monday, as demonstrations show no sign of abating.
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“Iran will not cooperate with the political committee established by the UN Human Rights Council,” ministry spokesman Nasser al-Kanani said.
The UN Human Rights Council voted on Thursday to investigate Iran’s deadly crackdown on protests.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk had earlier demanded that Iran stop its “excessive” use of force to suppress protests that erupted after the Sept. 16 death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Masha Amini.
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As of Nov. 26, 450 protesters, including 63 minors, had been killed in more than two months of unrest across the country, the radical news agency HRANA said. It said 60 members of the security forces were killed and 18,173 protesters were detained.
In a bid to challenge the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, protesters from all walks of life burned portraits of Khamenei and called for the overthrow of Iran’s Shia Muslim theocracy.
The protests were particularly focused on women’s rights — Amini was detained by morality police for dressing deemed inconsistent with Iran’s Islamic dress code — but also called for the resignation of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The unrest has become one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s civilian ruling elite since the Islamic Revolution came to power in 1979, even as authorities suppressed previous rounds of major protests.
Iran has blamed foreign enemies and their proxies for the unrest.
Kanani said on Monday that Iran had evidence of Western involvement in the protests sweeping the country.
“We have concrete information that the US, Western countries and some US allies played a role in the protests,” he said, without giving details.
Iran did not give a death toll for the protesters, but Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy foreign minister, said about 50 police officers were killed and hundreds were injured in the unrest – a death toll by security forces The first official figure for the number of people.
He did not say whether the figure also included deaths from other security forces such as the Revolutionary Guards.
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