Iranian uprising at a glance: day 198

The Iranian national uprising entered its 198th day, in which residents in different parts of Tehran, Iran's capital, and other cities have continued their nightly protests against the mullahs' regime, expressing their hatred and opposition to the ruling dictatorship as a whole and the oppressive security forces. 

Until the early hours of 1 April, residents in different areas of Tehran, including Shahrak-e Bagheri, as well as other cities, including Karaj, Qom and Kazerun, chanted slogans against the regime, including "Down with the dictator", "Down with Khamenei, the murderer".

In the city of Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan and Baluchestan, people continued to demonstrate and the regime authorities deliberately cut internet connections to prevent reports and images from being posted online.

In the large port city of Chabahar in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, residents set tyres on fire and blocked a main road for hours on Saturday to protest the killing of a gas station attendant by members of the regime's repressive state police.

For many poor people in Sistan and Baluchistan, transporting small quantities of fuel across the border and selling it to customers has become the only way to make a living and feed their families. They live like this because of more than four decades of regime corruption and discrimination against the Baloch minority. They are regularly attacked and killed by the regime's security forces under the pretext of fighting smuggling. Meanwhile, the regime's security forces control a vast fuel smuggling network that overshadows the activities of fuel transporters in Sistan and Baluchistan province.

The Iranian economy is collapsing and more and more people are living in very desperate circumstances, struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table for their families.

In many cities across Iran, teachers rallied in front of local education departments to protest against poor economic conditions, low salaries and inadequate working conditions. The protesting teachers also called for the release of their unjustly imprisoned colleagues. Rallies took place in the cities of Tabriz, Ardabil, Kermanshah, Baneh, Malayer, Hamadan, Zanjan, Bojnurd, Urmia and others.

Furthermore, according to the main Iranian opposition movement, WIPO, 3,626 of its supporters have been detained or have disappeared since the beginning of the uprising on 16 September 2022 until 20 March 2023, and there is no information on their living conditions and/or whereabouts. This is in addition to the thousands of people detained in various cities and towns across the country who were released before being identified or who were able to flee.

The Iranian national revolt entered its 197th day as resistance units affiliated with the WIPO launched a new wave of anti-regime actions in many cities across the country.

The youth attacked a building in Mashhad used by the mullahs' regime to promote its ideology of hatred, misogyny and fundamentalism. They also attacked the representative office of the regime's Foreign Ministry in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah. They attacked and set fire to the so-called "Khomeini Aid Centre" in the southern Iranian city of Kish. In another attack, they threw Molotov cocktails at IRGC Basij paramilitary headquarters in the cities of Mashhad, Hamadan, Bushehr and Mahabad and set them on fire.

They also set fire to large effigies of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the cities of Yazd, Babol and Qeshm, as well as a large effigy of deposed IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani in Tehran.

In addition, on Thursday, Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi met with Liam Fox and Franz Joseph Jung, former British and German defence ministers, during their visit to Ashraf-3. Mr Fox insisted on the need to blacklist the IRGC, which would hasten the overthrow of the regime, as has happened with other dictatorships. Mr. Jung said that some people say that the IRGC and its mission must change. But we have to say that it should be blacklisted.