French authorities were on Tuesday investigating as suicide the drowning of an Iranian man in the southeastern city of Lyon who had said on social media that he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the protest crackdown in Iran.
Mohammad Moradi, 38, was late on Monday found in the Rhone River that flows through the center of Lyon, a police source, who asked not to be named, told reporters.
Emergency services intervened, but were unable to resuscitate him on the riverbank, the source added.
Photo: AFP
Moradi had posted a video on Instagram saying that he was about to drown himself to highlight the crackdown on protesters in Iran since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.
“When you see this video, I will be dead,” Moradi said.
“The police are attacking people, we have lost a lot of sons and daughters, we have to do something,” Moradi said in the video.
“I decided to commit suicide in the Rhone River. It is a challenge, to show that we, Iranian people, we are very tired of this situation,” he added.
Lyon prosecutors said they had launched a probe to “verify the theory of suicide, in view in particular of the messages posted by the person concerned on social networks announcing his intention” to take his life.
The incident has shocked the city, with a small rally to remember Moradi taking place on the banks of the Rhone on Tuesday.
Mourners placed candles and wreaths on the riverside railings.
“Mohammad Moradi killed himself to make the voice of revolution heard in Iran. Our voice is not carried by Western media,” said Timothee Amini of the local Iranian community.
According to several members of the Iranian community, Moradi was a history undergraduate and worked in a restaurant.
He lived in Lyon with his wife for three years.
“His heart was beating for Iran, he could no longer bear the regime,” Amini said, deploring that while the Ukraine conflict was covered “every morning,” one heard “very little about Iran” in the news.
Lili Mohadjer said Moradi hoped that “his death would be another element for Western media and governments to back the revolution under way in Iran.”
She said his death was “not suicide,” but “sacrifice to gain freedom.”
Mohadjer said that Moradi in the video said he “could not live peacefully, comfortably here — where he was very well integrated” — while Iranians were being killed.
The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said that 476 protesters have been killed in the crackdown, with at least 100 Iranians risking execution over the protests, in addition to two young men already executed.
At least 100 Iranians arrested in more than 100 days of nationwide protests face charges punishable by death, IHR said.
Earlier this month, Iran executed two men in connection with the protests, an escalation of the authorities’ crackdown that advocates say is meant to instill public fear.
In a report on Tuesday, IHR identified 100 detainees who face potential capital punishment, including at least 11 already sentenced to death.
Five detainees on the IHR list are women.
The report said many of them have limited access to legal representation.
“By issuing death sentences and executing some of them, they [the authorities] want to make people go home,” IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said.
“It has some effect,” he told reporters, but “what we’ve observed in general is more anger against the authorities. Their strategy of spreading fear through executions has failed.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese