The Iranian government announced on Friday that it formed a special inquiry commission to look into the wave of protests that started with increasing living cost, and later on to large scale anti-government demonstrations that claimed the lives of thousands of people.
According to government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani in the state-sponsored news agency ISNA, a fact finding committee headed by the representatives of the concerned institutions has been set up. The panel has now initiated document gathering and statement taking in the panel investigation. She said that the end report would be put into the public after the investigation had been carried out and may be the foundation of subsequent prosecution.
Nevertheless, Mohajerani failed to explain how the mandate of the commission would go past investigating the economic triggers of the unrest to the investigation of the deaths that took place during the protests.
In the official government site, President Masoud Pezeshkian was quoted saying that investigative units had been assigned the role of establishing the causes of the unrest. He recognized that the events were serious, and that the government was bitter that such unfortunate occurrences have taken place.
The demonstrations started in the end of December and were mainly triggered by the outrage of the people due to inflation and the expense of the living standards. They escalated to serious heights on January 8, spreading to various cities in the country. In accordance with the official data, it was more than 3,000 people who were killed. The government has insisted that the majority of the victims were security agents or civilians who are purportedly the targets of the groups associated with Israel and the United States.
Contrarily, global human rights agencies, such as the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) based in the United States, report that the number of people killed could be much larger and accuse security agencies of unreasonable force towards protestors.
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