State television channels in Iran were hacked over the weekend, with images of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and female victims of his regime, including Mahsa Amini, were shown during a news bulletin.
Hackers flashed pictures of the 22-year old Amini, who died after being arrested and beaten by Iran’s morality police for not wearing a hijab properly last month, alongside other women allegedly killed during the protests.
The fifteen second hack displayed rebellious slogans, such as “Join us and stand up!” beside text criticising Khamenei’s regime, blaming him for the death of several women since the riots began on September 17.
As protests enter its fourth week, Iranian authorities continue their clampdown on demonstrators, causing further casualties.
According to the German-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, at least two people were killed on Saturday when the state’s riot police confronted mass protesters.
A footage posted on Twitter showed a man shot to death inside his car in the western city of Sanandaj.
A Paris-based organisation, Kurdistan Human Rights Network, said the man was shot after driving through the main thoroughfare and honking at security forces positioned on the street.
According to NBC News, honking has turned into a call for civil disobedience.
In an interview with the semi-official IRNA news agency over the weekend, an official from Kurdish police denied they were responsible for the man’s death, insisting that the police were not present at the scene, and do not use live rounds.
In the northeastern city of Mashhad, protesters set a police car on fire, chanting, “This is the regime’s end” and throwing molotov cocktails at nearby riot police.
Security forces fired tear gas and bullets at protesters, injuring several.
Protests have escalated throughout the country following the deaths of two teenage girls, Sarina Esmaeilzadeh, 16 and Nika Shakarami, 17.
On Friday, the Chief justice of Alborz province, Hossein Fazeli Herikandi, said that a preliminary investigation showed Esmaeilzadeh had died by suicide after falling from a five-story building.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, believe Esmaeilzadeh was killed by security forces when she was struck with batons on the head during a protest.
Nika Shakarami went missing on 20 September. A few days later, her family found her body in a morgue at a detention centre in Tehran.
Nika’s aunt, Atash Shakarami, told the BBC, “When we went to identify her, they didn’t allow us to see her body, only her face for a few seconds.”
Shakarami’s mother, Nasreen, said her daughter sustained blunt force trauma to the head before her body was stolen and buried in a remote area, without her family’s knowledge.
On Friday, the superintendent of the Criminal Prosecutor’s Office of Tehran Province released a statement that said Nika’s body was found in the backyard of a house in Tehran on 21 September and the autopsy found no trace of bullets in her body.
According to some human rights groups, at least 185 people, including children, have been killed in demonstrations since September 17.