Deadly unrest Roils Iranian city

Unrest erupted earlier this week when protesters stormed the building of a local governor and another police station. Those incidents came in response to Revolutionary Guard patrols fired at alleged fuel smugglers crossing the Pakistani border, killing at least 10 people in the area, according to rights activists in the area.

Iran’s presidential chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi, blamed Pakistani border guards for the shooting this week, saying they had shot at smugglers intending to use border points designated for fuel traders. The government said two or three people had died.

A senior Pakistani official said he was not aware of any formal complaint or allegation by Iran against his country’s forces, and that Pakistani forces had not opened fire.

The Iranian government said Thursday afternoon that the situation had calmed down but that no attackers had been arrested. The latest unrest has been confined to Saravan, but local protests over economic discontent have spread across the country in the past.

Internet and telephone lines were partially cut during the recent unrest, according to social media users who track internet traffic in Sistan-Baluchistan province, of which Saravan is a part. Restricting Internet access is a tactic used by Iranian authorities to prevent the dissemination of information and limit communication between protesters.

In recent years, protests rooted in economic discontent have posed significant security challenges for the government and prompted widespread action, most recently in late 2019, when hundreds of people were killed in a crackdown on protests across the country. Those protests were caused by an increase in fuel prices.

The Iranian government blames the US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration for the country’s economic situation, which has worsened from the economic slowdown of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sistan-Baluchistan, the second largest of Iran’s 31 provinces by area, has been one of the poorest and most marginalized areas in the country for centuries. The population consists mainly of the Baloch, a Sunni Muslim minority.

Iranian authorities have long maintained a strong security presence in the province due to a weak uprising there involving various militant groups – some separatist nationalists, other Sunni Islamic extremists – who have been labeled terrorists by Tehran.

Deputy provincial governor for security Mohammad Hadi Marashi told state media on Thursday that some of the attackers behind the unrest were linked to opposition groups, without naming them.

The province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and is on the main drug trafficking route from South Asia to Europe. Amid high inflation, a depreciated currency, and severely hampered international trade due to sanctions, smuggling gasoline from Iran can generate significant illegal income. Iranians still enjoy the lowest fuel prices in the world due to large government subsidies.

President Hassan Rouhani has said he would step up the fight against smuggling to improve the country’s economy. From March to November last year, Iranian authorities fined smugglers, particularly fuel and livestock, of about $ 570 million, an increase of nearly 50% from the same period last year.

Iranian social media users in recent days accused authorities of resorting to violence against an impoverished population. Some drew parallels to the 2019 massacre in the southwestern port city of Mahshahr, home to another Sunni minority, when Revolutionary Guard forces surrounded protesters and killed up to 100 civilians.

The Defenders of Human Rights Center, an advocacy group led by Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, wrote a letter to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday urging an investigation into the killings by security forces in Sistan-Baluchistan.

—Saeed Shah in Islamabad contributed to this article.

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at [email protected]