Iranian city shops shut to step up pressure on clerical rulers

Iranian shops shut their doors in several cities on Monday, following calls for a three-day nationwide general strike from protesters seeking the fall of clerical rulers.

Iran has been rocked by nationwide unrest following the death of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16 in the custody of the morality police, posing one of the strongest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution.

1500tasvir, a Twitter account with 380,000 followers focused on the protests, shared videos of shut stores in key commercial areas, such as Tehran’s Bazaar, and other large cities such as Karaj, Isfahan, and Shiraz.

دوشنبه ۱۴ آذر؛ تبریز.#اعتصابات_سراسری #مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/sQWrK2dOHH

— +۱۵۰۰تصویر (@1500tasvir) December 5, 2022

Reuters could not immediately verify the footage.

Witnesses speaking to Reuters said riot police and the Basij militia had been heavily deployed in central Tehran.

The semi-official Fars news agency confirmed that a jewellery shop belonging to former Iranian football legend Ali Daei was sealed by authorities, following its decision to close down for the three days of the general strike.

Similar footage by 1500tasvir and other activist accounts was shared of closed shops in smaller cities like Bojnourd, Kerman, Sabzevar, Ilam, Ardabil.

Kurdish Iranian rights group Hengaw also reported that 19 cities had joined the general strike movement in western Iran, where most of the country’s Kurdish population live.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the unrest since the death of Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was detained by the morality police for flouting hijab rules.