TEHRAN: Iranian lawmakers held a closed-door session on Sunday to discuss the deadly protests that hit the country last week, while more pro-regime rallies were held in several cities.
“The security officials confirmed that most of those arrested have been released,” Gholamreza Heydari, a reformist lawmaker in Tehran, told parliament’s ICANA website.
He was speaking after the session in which MPs grilled Interior Minister Abdolrahmani Rahmani Fazli, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani over the days of unrest that straddled the new year.
Mohammad Reza Kachouie, another deputy, said most of those detained were unemployed people, “without university degrees.”
“The parliament meeting principally looked into the condition of the people, the economic situation and unemployment. The enemy is trying to infiltrate the country by using these issues,” he told ICANA.
A reformist MP Bahram Parsaie said blame should not focus on President Hassan Rouhani but on decades of poor governance.
“I hope we face up to reality and take lessons from past mistakes,” ICANA quoted him as saying.
The protests began on December 28 over economic issues before quickly spiralling out of control and turning against the regime as a whole, leaving 21 dead and hundreds arrested.
Police have previously said they have released many of the hundreds arrested during the unrest, but that the main instigators were “in the hands of the judiciary.”
Some lawmakers voiced concern over the Internet controls put in place during the unrest, including a ban on Iran’s most popular messaging app, Telegram, which officials said had been used to incite violence.
“The parliament is not in favor of keeping Telegram filtering in place, but it must pledge that it will not be used as a tool by the enemies of the Iranian people,” Behrouz Nemati, spokesman for the parliament’s presiding board, wrote on Instagram, which was also temporarily blocked during the unrest.
Many Iranians use Telegram as their main source of news and a way of bypassing the highly restrictive state media, with almost a third of Iran’s 80 million people using the app daily.
Some 9,000 online businesses have been disrupted by the blocking, semi-official news agency ISNA reported, quoting a report by the culture ministry’s digital media center.
Pro-government rallies were again held in several cities on Sunday, this time in Qazvin, Rasht, Shahr-e Kurd and Yazd.
Tens of thousands of people have participated in similar rallies in the past few days.
The rallies are “the people’s response to the rioters and troublemakers and their supporters,” said state television.
Iran parliament holds special meeting on protests
Iran parliament holds special meeting on protests
UN: 119,000 people flee Aleppo after days of intense fighting
DUBAI: United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Tuesday that recent clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters in Aleppo, northern Syria, have displaced around 119,000 people, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.
He also noted that the UNHCR is working to provide assistance to all displaced families in shelters and host communities.
“As of yesterday, some 119,000 people have been displaced since the resumption of hostilities in Aleppo. The UNHCR and other partners on the ground are providing assistance to displaced families in temporary shelters and host communities. This support includes the distribution of blankets, mattresses, and essential winter clothing,” the channel quoted the spokesperson as saying.
Hundreds of displaced residents began returning on Monday to an Aleppo neighborhood in northern Syria after days of intense fighting.
The clashes, which killed at least 23 people and displaced tens of thousands, broke out on Jan. 6 in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Achrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud and Bani Zeid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on implementation of a deal that would merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured the three neighborhoods.
On Monday, armed security forces stood guard as traffic flowed normally through the streets of Achrafieh, while buses carried displaced families back to the neighborhood. Many shops had reopened, although residents complained about electricity cuts.
