Defiant Iranian schoolgirls shout down armed forces speaker as anti-govt protests rock country
5 October 2022, 16:53 | Updated: 5 October 2022, 19:00
Brave Iranian schoolgirls took off their headscarves and chanted against paramilitary police in an astonishing show of defiance against the beleaguered regime.
Footage shows the teenagers chanting "get lost, Basiji" at a member of the government-run hardline Islamic militia who had been brought to the school to talk to the students.
The unprecedented scenes are the latest demonstrations to engulf the regime since Mahsa Amini, 22, died while in police custody last month.
Iran has been rocked by a wave of demonstrations which have taken place in schoolyards and streets across the country.
Earlier this week in Karaj - west of capital Tehran - students were heard shouting "if we don't unite, they will kill us one by one".
While in the southern city of Shiraz, dozens of schoolgirls waving their headscarves in the air shouting "death to the dictator" blocked traffic on a main road.
Students have also been pictured raising their middle finger at a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei and his predecessor.
Iran has been rocked by the protests which erupted after Masha died after being arrested by Iran's morality police.
She had allegedly violated the country's strict religious dress code. Iranian authorities have claimed she died of a heart attack but eyewitnesses reported watching the police beat her.
Her father Amjad Amini said doctors refused to let him see his daughter after her death and her family say she had no pre-existing condition.
Mr Amini said: "They're lying. They're telling lies. Everything is a lie...no matter how much I begged they wouldn't let me see my daughter."
Read more: Mahsa Amini death: Iranian women are 'harassed for their appearance in public,' says correspondent
On Monday October 3, Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, broke his silence giving the security forces his full backing and branding the protests as US and Israel-engineered "riots".
Ayatollah Khamenei has been the supreme leader of Iran since 1989, replacing Ayatollah Khomeini who introduced a hardline Islamic state when the Shah was deposed in 1979.
