The number of protesters killed on the third day of the Khuzestan protests has risen to three: Mustafa Naeemavi, Qassem Khaziri and Ali Mazraeh, are the names of three young men from Shadegan, Kut Abdullah and Ahvaz, who have been shot and killed by the police in the so-called “thirsty uprising”, which began on Thursday, July 15, 2021, across many cities and regions of Khuzestan on a large-scale.
Meanwhile, only the killing of Mustafa Naeemavi in Shadegan has been confirmed by regime officials and media so far. That only happened after citizen journalists and civil activists released videos and reports of this citizen’s murder by the Islamic Republic oppressive forces on social media. Fars News, affiliated with the IRGC, posted a short video on its website hours after the news of the death of this young man from Khuzestan was confirmed. A team of Fars News’ reporters-interrogators goes to the Naeemavi family and places Mustafa’s father and brother in the corner of a room in front of the camera. In the corner of the room, on a table, places two framed photos of Khamenei and Khomeini under a photograph of Qassem Soleimani, which seems to have been glued to the wall at that moment, with spit, crooked. They then took a confession from the relatives of the protesting victim.
The interval between the confirmation of Naeemavi’s death by Omid Sabripour, the acting governor of Shadegan, and the release of this video by Fars News Agency, taking into account the time required to prepare it, shows: The screenwriter of any news about the killing of citizens during the protests is the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). Most likely, interrogator-reporters and IRGC intelligence’s agents are now trying to produce something similar to the confessions of the Naeemavi family.
Third Day of Protests
The air in Khuzestan is hot, polluted, and sultry these days. Mahshahr port recorded 86%, Shadegan 84%, Ahvaz 78%, Abadan 74% and Shoushtar 59% humidity at a temperature of nearly 50 degrees Celsius (122F) yesterday. Hence, the protests do not take place in the scorching heat of the day, but in the evening. But thirst does not know the difference between night and day. Air pollution too. In this region, out of 365 days of the year, on average, 230 days the air is polluted and for more than one month a year, the people of Khuzestan breathe highly toxic air in the “acute unhealthy condition”. But thirst does not know the difference between healthy and unhealthy air. Khuzestan, which was once one of the provinces in the country hosting the most immigrants not long before the 1979 catastrophe, and its urban facilities and cultural and recreational centers made it not only an attractive area for living and working, but also a unique tourist hub in the country and the Middle East, has become one of the provinces in the country where most of its people immigrate from there, today. Today, Khuzestan’s Hour al-Azim Wetland is dry, its Karkheh River’s water is muddy, its Karun is salty from Gotvand dam, its wealth belongs to Lebanon, the Houthis, Assad and “holy shrines” in Iraq which killed its children for 8 years and dropped bombs and missiles on them and destroyed their houses. Today, Khuzestan’s Mustafa and Qassem and Ali are shot dead by the IRGC and Basij in the streets.
On the evening of Saturday, July 17, the people of Khuzestan protested and marched in at least 17 cities of the province: Shush, Shaour, Ahvaz, Bostan, Abu Homeyzeh, Abadan, Shadegan, Abdul Khan, Karkheh, Susangerd, Hoveyzeh, Mollasani, Hamidiyeh, Mahshahr, Kut Abdullah , Khorramshahr and Kot Seyed Naeem. In some of the videos of these protest rallies shared on social media, the presence of a large number of repressive forces that have been deployed from other parts of the country to counter the “thirst uprising” in Khuzestan can be seen. Shooting and firing of forces towards protesters can also be seen and heard in some of the videos shared by citizens journalists in cyberspace. As we predicted in yesterday’s analytical report, last night in most cities of Khuzestan, reports indicated that the Internet was down and the information network was disrupted, which is one of the regime’s traditional methods of dealing with civil protests. During the third night of Khuzestan protests, people closed roads at several points between Ahvaz and Susangard, Kut Abdullah and Shush. People in Shush and Susangerd rallied in front of the offices and homes of regime officials, who were confronted with violence and shootings by the regime’s repressive agents.
The people of Khuzestan are thirsty. They do not have drinking water. The Islamic Republic has turned their millennial environment into a lifeless ruin during its four decades of miserable rule. Shush is one of the oldest cities in human history, where urban life has been uninterrupted from thousands of years ago to the present day. However, they are forcing its people out of their homes today. And if they open their mouths to protest against thirst and lack of water, they cut off the Internet and shoot their children in the chest. The people of Khuzestan do not have water. And Ayatollah Heydari, the representative of Khuzestan in the “Experts Assembly”, relying on his clothes (his position and status as a mullah) today, issued a fatwa for the “Khuzestan thirsty uprising” who are demanding water and shouting “I am thirsty”: “The system is free from these injustices. And demanding should not be to the detriment of the country and the regime, such demanding is haram (forbidden by Sharia law) because it harms Islam […] Therefore, it must be done in such a way that the enemies of the country, Islam and the monarchists, do not meddle in the people’s protest and discontent.”
Translation of this post by Sahar.