Raising its concern over the death of children in the ongoing protest in Iran, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said in a statement on Friday, that the reported deaths of children at anti-government protests “must stop.”
An “estimated 50 children have reportedly lost their lives in the public unrest in Iran,” UNICEF said in the statement.
This comes as the unrest in Iran has continued for more than two months, and amid increasing calls from protesters and activists online to UNICEF, Amnesty International and other human rights organizations to take action on human rights violations and crimes against children taking place in Iran.
“They just say, hey, Islamic Republic, what are you doing is bad,” one protester in Iran told CNN. “Yes, everybody knows it’s bad. Three-year-old children know it’s bad, but we need actual action. Do something.
I don’t know. I believe they know better than us what they can do.”
“In Iran, UNICEF remains deeply concerned by reports of children being killed, injured, and detained,” the statement read, citing the death of a young boy named Kian Pirfalak, one of seven people killed during Wednesday’s protests in the southwestern city of Izeh. “This is terrifying and must stop,” the organization added.
UNICEF reported Pirfalak’s age as 10 years old. Iranian state media has reported his age as nine, reports said.
The child travelling in a car on Wednesday with his family when he was shot dead and his father injured by gunfire, his mother told state media in an interview with Tasnim Friday.
According to Iran’s state-aligned news agency ISNA, protesters set a seminary on fire around the same time as people were shot and killed in Izeh in what state media outlets are calling a “terror attack.” Activists are accusing the Iranian regime of killing Kian and others in Izeh.
The Islamic Republic is facing one of the biggest and unprecedented shows of dissent in recent history following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman detained by the morality police allegedly for not wearing her hijab properly. At least 378 people have been killed since demonstrations began, according to an Iranian human rights group, as the country’s Supreme Leader issued a warning that the protest movement is “doomed to failure.”
The organization Iran Human Rights published the estimated death toll Saturday, adding that it includes 47 children killed by security forces.
