BAGHDAD – Iran’s supreme leader praised paramilitary volunteers tasked with quelling dissent in a televised address on Saturday, as dozens of eye doctors warned that security forces have blinded an increasing number of demonstrators during anti-government protests.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke to members of the Basij, the elite Revolutionary Guard’s volunteer paramilitary wing, and repeated unsubstantiated claims that protesters across the country are “tools” of the US and its “mercenaries.”
“(The) Basij must remember that the main conflict is with global hegemony,” Khamenei said, referring to the United States. The speech commemorating Basij week in Iran echoed previous statements denouncing the protests as a foreign plot to destabilize Iran.
Extolling the Basij’s military and social virtues over the years, Khamenei stated that the forces “sacrificed themselves in order to save people from a bunch of rioters and mercenaries,” referring to the recent countrywide unrest. “They gave up their lives to confront oppression.”
The Basij have taken the lead in putting a stop to the protests that began on September 17, sparked by the death of a young woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
According to social media, protests continued on Saturday at some universities in Tehran and other cities. Protests have become more dispersed as a result of a nationwide crackdown by Iranian security forces. Commercial strikes have also been called by protesters.
According to pro-reform Iranian news sites Sobhema and Iran International, as well as other social media sites, 140 ophthalmologists raised concerns in a letter about an increasing number of patients suffering severe eye injuries as a result of being shot with metal pellets and rubber bullets.
“Unfortunately, in many cases, the hit resulted in the loss of sight in one or both eyes,” according to the letter, which was addressed to the head of the country’s ophthalmologists association. The doctors asked that the head of Iran’s Opthalmology Association convey their concerns to the appropriate authorities about the irreparable damage caused by security forces.
It was the second letter from eye doctors expressing their concern about police brutality and the use of pellets and rubber bullets to hit demonstrators and others in the eyes. Over 200 ophthalmologists signed a previous letter.
Last week, videos of law student Ghazal Ranjkesh in the southern city of Banda Abbas, who lost an eye after being shot with a metal pellet on her way home from work, went viral on social media.
Source: AP
