The niece of ‘Ayatollah’ Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top guide, called on Monday for people to put pressure on international governments to cut ties with Tehran, following the violent crackdown on anti-government protests.
In a video posted online by her brother, who lives in France, Farideh Moradkhani, detained since Wednesday, urged “conscious people of the world” to support Iranian protesters🇧🇷
The video was shared this week, days after the arrest of Farideh Moradkhani, an engineer and former activist whose father, now dead and married to Khamenei’s sister, was a prominent figure in the Iranian opposition.
“I call on the conscious people of the world to support us and ask their governments not to respond with empty words and ‘slogans’, but with real action and to end all dealings with this regime.”asked the activist in the video statement, quoted by the Associated Press (AP) agency.
Family ties to ‘Ayatollah’ Ali Khamenei have not prevented Farideh Moradkhani from speaking his mind.
Her branch of the family has opposed Khamenei for decades, and Moradkhani has been arrested on other occasions for her activism.
It is the second time since the beginning of 2022 that she has been arrested.
Protests in Iran, now entering their third month and sparked by the death of a young Iranian Kurd in September, were met with violent crackdown by Tehran regime security forces, who used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrations. to stop.
This wave of protests was triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the custody of the so-called morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating the strict dress code imposed on women in the Islamic Republic.
At least 451 people have been killed, including 63 minors, and another 18,173 have been detained, according to human rights watchdog HRANA.
Despite the repression, demonstrations continue in several cities in Iran.
The United Nations Human Rights Council last week voted to establish a mission to investigate the violent crackdown on protests.
Iran has already said it will not cooperate with a UN fact-finding mission, in statements made today by State Department spokesman Nasser Kanaani.
Source: DN
