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Hundreds of mourners gathered in southwest Iran on Friday for the funeral of 9-year-old Kian Pirfalak, whose family said they were killed by state security forces on Wednesday. He is believed to be the latest victim of the Iranian government’s bloody crackdown during two months of nationwide protests.
Iranian authorities have denied responsibility for Pirfalak’s death, saying he was one of seven people killed by unidentified gunmen on motorcycles who opened fire at a bazaar in the city of Izeh on Wednesday.
“They shouldn’t say they were terrorists, they’re lying,” Pirfalak’s mother, Zeinab Molairad, told the crowd at his funeral. “The civil [government] Forces themselves shot my child.”
The crowd responded with chants of “Death to Khamenei,” a reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
The killing of Pirfalak has further fueled a public uprising that has raged since mid-September following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in the custody of Iran’s “moral police”. As news of Pirfalak’s death broke on Thursday, a Farsi hashtag that translates to #child_killing_government circulated on social media. Petitions circulated online on Friday calling for nationwide protests.
On Thursday night, angry demonstrators in the western city of Khomein set fire to the ancestral home of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. A grainy video posted online appears to show a Molotov cocktail exploding against the side of the building.
Anti-government protests began Tuesday in Izeh and lasted into Wednesday, sparked by an online call to commemorate an earlier round of demonstrations in 2019. Video on Wednesday showed protesters chanting, “This is the year of blood, seyed.” Ali will be overthrown”, a reference to Khamenei. Gunshots can be clearly heard in another video overlooking the city.
According to pro-state media and online videos, protesters attacked and set fire to the seminary in Izeh on Wednesday.
Pirfalak and his family were apparently onlookers trying to drive home on Wednesday as chaos swept the city. At one point they passed a group of security forces posted near a crowd of protesters, Molairad said on Friday. They proceeded cautiously before one of the officers yelled at them to turn back.
“‘Dad, trust the police this time and go back, they want what’s good for us,'” Molairad recalled as Pirfalak told his father. As they drove back to the police station, plainclothes officers opened fire. Molairad said, “They riddled the car with bullets!”
“I told the kids to lie under the seats,” she continued. “If I get shot myself, it doesn’t matter. My little one was under the dash. I do not know why [Kian] didn’t work. He was chubby. It didn’t go under the seat.”
In video from Wednesday’s scene, Pirfalak’s lifeless body is laid out on the ground while a woman screams and a man yells, “This is the result of the Islamic Republic! This is the result of the Islamic Republic!”
The Washington Post has not been able to independently confirm the family’s version of events, although activists and other media outlets have corroborated it. Another child, 14-year-old Sepehr Maghsoudi, was also killed by government security forces that night, activists said.
“[The government’s] The only way is to unleash maximum force,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group. “They still hope there is enough intimidation to push people back.”
Repressive tactics: How Iran tries to stop Mahsa Amini protests
At least 326 people, including 56 children, have been killed since the demonstrations began in mid-September, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, although reporting restrictions make it impossible to confirm the true number of victims.
Abdol Reza Saifi, the deputy governor of Khuzestan province, where Izeh is located, told the Islamic Republic of News Agency (IRNA) on Thursday that military and police forces do not use “weapons of war” and rely only on riot control techniques. But investigations by The Post, as well as other media and human rights groups, have documented the apparent use of live ammunition by Iranian security forces.
Earlier this week, three protesters were sentenced to death in Tehran, Iran’s judiciary reported on Wednesday. Another protester was sentenced to death last weekend.
“The government simply refuses to understand the problem it faces,” said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch.