Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was greeted with chants of “get lost” from female students while he visited a university and condemned the protests that resulted from the death of a young woman while she was in custody for failing to properly wear a headscarf.
A video posted on Twitter by the activist 1500tasvir website showed what it said were women students chanting “Raisi get lost” and “Mullahs get lost” as the president visited their campus. Another social media video showed students chanting: “We don’t want a corrupt guest,” in reference to Raisi.
Raisi addressed professors and students at Alzahra University in Tehran, reciting a poem that equated “rioters” with flies, as nationwide demonstrations entered a fourth week in response to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody last month.
The protests erupted Sept. 17, after the burial of Amini, a Kurdish woman who died in the custody of Iran’s feared morality police. Amini had been detained for an alleged violation of strict Islamic dress codes for women. Since then, protests spread across the country and were met by a fierce crackdown, in which dozens are estimated to have been killed and hundreds arrested.
Two people were reportedly killed as the protests continued across the country on Saturday.
The United States said last month it will sanction Iranian security officials in response to Amini’s death.
“In response to this and other human rights violations in Iran – including the violent suppression of peaceful protests – the United States is imposing sanctions on Iran’s Morality Police and senior security officials who have engaged in serious human rights abuses, pursuant to Executive Order 13553,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“The Morality Police, an element of Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF), arrests women for wearing ‘inappropriate’ hijab and enforces other restrictions on freedom of expression. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is further designating Haj Ahmad Mirzaei and Mohammad Rostami Cheshmeh Gachi, both of whom are senior officials in the Morality Police.”
Protesters have spoken out against the Iranian regime across the world including in the Netherlands where thousands of people gathered on Saturday and sang in solidarity with the Iranian protesters.
Reuters contributed to this report.
