An Iranian student residing in Lyon (south-eastern France) committed suicide by throwing himself into the Rhône River that flows through this city as a way of showing his indignation and fed up with the lack of freedoms in his country.
“When they see this video, I’ll already be dead,” Mohammad sentences in a three-minute video posted on Instagram, in which a river is seen in the background, probably the Rhône into which he said he would throw himself.
The lifeless body of this 38-year-old man was found in the water of that river, among some branches, at the height of Avenue Leclerc in Lyon, according to the French media.
“I have chosen this option (to commit suicide) without any stress, I am not sad, we Iranians need help,” he says in the video of him, recorded in Persian and French.
Mohammad, who had lived in France since 2019, was married to an Iranian and was a History student, called on the international community for “attention” to what is happening in Iran, where “the police and the government are extremely violent against people.”
During the mobilizations that began in September over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish girl accused of wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly, at least 2,000 people have been accused of various crimes and 11 of them sentenced to death, of whom two have already been hanged.
In the more than three months of protests, more than 400 people have died and there are at least 15,000 detainees, according to the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
The strong police repression has provoked harsh international condemnation and sanctions from Western countries.