Deadly unrest is eating away at the Iranian city

The unrest erupted earlier this week, when protesters stormed a local governor’s building and another police station. The incidents came in response to Revolutionary Guard patrols firing on alleged smugglers crossing the Pakistani border, killing at least 10 people, according to rights activists in the area.

Iran’s presidential cabinet chief Mahmoud Vaezi this week blamed Pakistani border guards for the shooting, saying they fired on traffickers who intended to use border crossings for fuel traders. The government said two or three people had died.

A senior Pakistani official said he was unaware of any formal complaints or accusations from Iran against his country’s forces and that Pakistani troops had not opened fire.

The Iranian government said on Thursday afternoon that the situation had calmed down, but that no attackers had been arrested. The latest unrest has been limited to Saravan, but localized protests over economic unrest have spread nationwide in the past.

The Internet and telephone lines have been partially disrupted during recent unrest, according to social media users following internet traffic in the province of Sistan-Balutchistan, of which Saravan is a part. Restricting internet access is a tactic used by the Iranian authorities to prevent the spread of information and limit communication between protesters.

In recent years, protests rooted in economic discontent have posed significant security challenges for the government and led to widespread repression, most recently in late 2019, when hundreds were killed in a crackdown on protests across the country. These protests were triggered by rising fuel prices.

The Iranian government blames US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on the country’s economic situation, which has been exacerbated by the economic slowdown in the Covid-19 pandemic.

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

Iranian authorities have long maintained a strong security presence in the province due to a low-intensity insurgency, involving several militant groups – some separatist nationalists, others Sunni Islamist 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 riots were linked to opposition groups without naming them.

On the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, the province is on the main drug trafficking route from South Asia to Europe. Against the backdrop of high inflation, a depreciated currency and severely constrained international trade due to sanctions, petrol smuggling in Iran can provide significant illicit income. Iranians continue to enjoy some of the lowest fuel prices in the world due to large government subsidies.

President Hassan Rouhani has said he will step up the fight against smuggling to improve the country’s economy. From March to November last year, the Iranian authorities fined smugglers of fuel and animals in particular by about $ 570 million, an increase of almost 50% over the same period last year.

Iranian social media users in recent days have accused the authorities of resorting to violence against a poor population. Some drew parallels with the mass killing in the southwestern port city of Mahshahr in 2019, hosting another Sunni minority, when Revolutionary Guard forces surrounded the protesters and killed up to 100 civilians.

The Center for Human Rights Defenders, a support group led by Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, wrote a letter to the United Nations human rights commissioner on Wednesday calling for an investigation into killings by security forces in the United Nations. Balutchistan.

—Saeed Shah of Islamabad contributed to this article.

Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at [email protected]