{"id":97002,"date":"2021-07-20T06:42:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T11:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=97002"},"modified":"2021-07-20T06:42:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T11:42:38","slug":"auto-draft-626","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2021\/07\/20\/auto-draft-626\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Shows Iranian Police Opening Fire During Water Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"VOA \u2014 DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – Iranian police opened fire late Sunday night amid protests against water shortages in southwestern Iran, a video showed, the latest unrest after days of demonstrations that have seen at least one person killed.<\/p>\n

The video from the Human Rights Activists News Agency by Human Rights Activists in Iran showed the shooting in\u00a0Susangerd, which has been an epicenter of demonstrations in Iran\u2019s restive Khuzestan province.<\/p>\n

A police officer fires into the air with a pistol and at least one other shot can be heard in the footage. Riot police on motorcycles race around a corner, firing at the protesters.<\/p>\n

The video corresponded to other Associated Press reporting of the demonstrations in Khuzestan, home to ethnic Arabs who complain of discrimination by Iran\u2019s Shiite theocracy. The video also matched known features of\u00a0Susangerd\u00a0and the protest depicted took place where other demonstrations occurred in recent days.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, the deputy governor of Khuzestan province in charge of security affairs acknowledged the unrest had killed at least one person. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted Valiollah Hayati as blaming \u201crioters\u201d for killing a citizen in the city of\u00a0Shadegan\u00a0in Khuzestan. Iran\u2019s government long has blamed protesters for deaths during demonstrators in unrest, despite its history of bloody crackdowns.<\/p>\n

Arab separatists have long\u00a0operated\u00a0in Khuzestan, which Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein tried to seize in his 1980s war with Iran. They have blown up oil pipelines in the past and have been blamed for attacks, including a 2018 assault on a military parade that killed at least 25 people in Ahvaz.<\/p>\n

Water worries in the past have sent angry demonstrators into the streets in Iran<\/a>. The country has faced\u00a0rolling blackouts for weeks now, in part over what authorities describe as a severe drought. Precipitation had decreased by\u00a0almost 50%\u00a0in the last year, leaving dams with dwindling water supplies.<\/p>\n

The protests in Khuzestan come as\u00a0Iran struggles through repeated waves of infections in the coronavirus pandemic<\/a> and as\u00a0thousands of workers in its oil industry have launched strikes<\/a> for better wages and conditions.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s economy<\/a> also has struggled under U.S.\u00a0sanctions then-President Donald Trump\u2019s 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw America from Tehran\u2019s nuclear deal with world powers, crashing the value of\u00a0the\u00a0Islamic Republic\u2019s currency, the rial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – Iranian police opened fire late Sunday night amid protests against water shortages in southwestern Iran, a video showed, the latest unrest after days of demonstrations that have seen at least one person killed. The video from the Human Rights Activists News Agency by Human Rights Activists in Iran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recposts"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97005,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97002\/revisions\/97005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}