Iranian protesters take to the streets to condemn downing of civilian aircraft
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Hours after the Iranian military admitted it had mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner three days earlier, killing all 176 people on board, protesters took to the streets of major cities throughout Iran on Saturday, chanting anti-government slogans.
Some vigils held for the victims of the crash turned into protests, including hundreds of people that gathered in front of Amir Kabir University in Tehran, who started denouncing the security forces arriving at the scene. Among other chants, as seen on videos posted on social media, they called on the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to resign.
Another video, also shot in Tehran, shows security forces beating protesters and using tear gas to disperse them.
Locals in other major cities such as Rasht and Isfahan, as well as those in western Kurdish-majority provinces, held similar demonstrations to honor the lives lost in the crash and to voice condemnation of Iranian officials who had, for days, staunchly denied the plane had been shot down at all.
The police briefly detained the British ambassador to Iran as the protests continued, a move London described as a “flagrant violation” of international law. The Foreign Office said in a statement, “The Iranian government is at a cross-roads moment. It can continue its march towards pariah status with all the political and economic isolation that entails, or take steps to deescalate tensions and engage in a diplomatic path forwards.”
The Ukrainian Boeing 737–800 was heading on Wednesday from the Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran to Kiev. Shortly after the incident, reports indicated that the aircraft may have been shot down by Iranian rockets from its missile defense system.
Initially, Iranian officials dismissed the reports as “illogical” and “psychological warfare,” but the military later confirmed its missile defense systems had struck the airliner due to “unintentional human error.”
Related Article: Iran admits shooting down Ukrainian airliner in ‘unintentional human error’
This occurred just hours after the Iranian aerospace force fired ballistic missiles on two Iraqi bases that house American troops in an operation dubbed “Martyr Soleimani,” widely publicized by Iranian media as Tehran’s “severe revenge” for the US killing of General Qasim Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) last week.
The reason for the mistake, the Iranian military explained, was that the country’s defenses were on “the highest level of readiness” in anticipation of a possible US retaliation to Tehran’s missile strikes the night before on American targets in Iraq.
In one video that emerged on social media, protesters called Soleimani “a killer.” In another video, they said America was not their enemy but rather the authorities in Tehran.
A previous round of anti-government protests in November that came after a severe gas price hike led to the deaths of hundreds and the arrest of thousands of others as the security forces brutally suppressed crowds in a matter of days. Estimates on the number of casualties vary due to the lack of transparency in the country, with Reuters reporting as high as 1,500 could have been killed.
Editing by John J. Catherine