JEDDAH: Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in the western Iranian city of Hamadan over a lack of drinking water and the inability of the Tehran regime to solve the problem.
About 200 people gathered in front of the governor’s office “to protest against the interruption of the urban water network,” sources in the city. They were later joined by several hundred more protesters in a second successive day of demonstrations.
The demonstrators held empty water bottles in their hands, shouted slogans against the regime and demanded urgent action to provide drinking water to the city.
Dozens of people, many of them women, called on fellow citizens to “show their courage” and take part in the demonstration, according to video footage posted online.
Parts of Hamadan had been experiencing water cuts for eight days, leading to demands from the protesters for the resignation of the governor and incompetent officials.
Iran has suffered for years from chronic dry spells and heatwaves that are expected to worsen with climate change.
In the past few months, thousands of people angry over the drying up of rivers have been driven to protest, particularly in central and southwestern Iran. In mid-July, police arrested several people for “disturbing security” after they demonstrated against the drying up of Lake Urmia in Iran’s northwestern mountains.
Over the past decade, Iran has also endured regular floods, a phenomenon made worse when torrential rain falls on sun-baked earth.
At the end of July, 96 people died in more than a week of flooding in several regions of Iran, including dozens near Tehran.
In a further blow to the regime, an Iranian exile group has filed a lawsuit in New York against President Ebrahim Raisi Thursday, challenging US authorities to take action against him when he arrives in the city next month for the UN General Assembly.
The lawsuit by the National Council of Resistance of Iran accuses Raisi of torture and murder in a 1988 crackdown on Iranian dissidents. It says he was a member of a “death commission” of four judges who ordered thousands of executions and the torture of members of the opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.
The lawsuit challenges the belief that Raisi enjoys immunity under US law as a head of state and an official foreign representative attending the UN.
“Raisi is not a diplomat ... and is not eligible for the privileges extended under the Vienna Convention. Nor is he in fact a head of state,” NCRI lawyer Steven Schneebaum said on Thursday.
