Hundreds take to the streets in Lyon, France in support of Iranian protesters

Demonstrators chant and carry banners reading ‘Woman, life, freedom’ — the slogan of the protests in Iran

LYON, France — Some 1,000 people rallied in the French city of Lyon on Sunday in support of unprecedented anti-regime protests in Iran, AFP journalists saw.

The protesters walked through the streets of the eastern city carrying a banner that read “Woman, life, freedom” and chanting the words, which have become the slogan of the protests.

Demonstrations in Iran began after the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22. She had been arrested by morality police enforcing a strict dress code that requires women to wear a scarf-like covering over their hair and neck.

The protests have escalated into calls for an end to the Islamic regime, posing the biggest challenge for the clerics since the 1979 revolution deposed the shah.

Authorities have responded with deadly violence that has left hundreds dead.

Thousands have been arrested and 14 detainees sentenced to death, many for killing or attacking security force members, according to the judiciary. Four have been executed, the most recent two on Saturday.

In this photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, Iranians protests the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police while in custody, in Tehran, October 27, 2022. (Middle East Images/AP)

Many of Sunday’s protesters in France had a personal connection to the country.

“I am here to demand freedom in Iran,” Sholeh Golrokhi, 49, said. “When I was little, they arrested all of my family.”

“We are here to ask Western countries to be the voice of our people” and “expel Iranian ambassadors,” said Samane Ramezanpanah, 35.

A woman holds an umbrella covered with strands of hairs during a rally in Lyon on January 8, 2023, against the Iranian regime. (JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK / AFP)

In late December, a 38-year-old Iranian man drowned in the Rhone river that flows through Lyon, saying on social media that he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the crackdown of the protests in Iran.