DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — At least 208 people in Iran have been killed amid protests over sharply rising gasoline prices and a subsequent crackdown by security forces, Amnesty International said Monday, as one government official acknowledged telling police to shoot demonstrators.

Iran has yet to release any nationwide statistics over the unrest that gripped the Islamic Republic beginning Nov. 15 with minimum prices for government-subsidized gasoline rising by 50%. State-run media did not acknowledge the Amnesty report and Iran’s mission to the U.N. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran shut down internet access amid the unrest, blocking those inside the country from sharing their videos and information, as well as limiting the outside world from knowing the scale of the protests and violence. The restoration of the internet in recent days across much of the country has seen other videos surface.

“We’ve seen over 200 people killed in a very swift time, in under a week,” said Mansoureh Mills, an Iran researcher at Amnesty. “It’s something pretty unprecedented event in the history of the human rights violations in the Islamic Republic.”

While not drawing as many Iranians into the streets as those protesting the disputed 2009 presidential election, the gasoline price demonstrations rapidly turned violent faster than any previous rallies. That shows the widespread economic discontent gripping the country since May 2018, when President Donald Trump imposed crushing sanctions after unilaterally withdrawing from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Since the summer, tensions across the Mideast have spiked with attacks the U.S. blames on Tehran. Iran, meanwhile, began to break the deal’s centrifuges, enrichment and stockpile limitations with hopes of pressuring Europe to offer it a way to sell crude oil abroad despite Washington’s sanctions.

In a statement Monday, Amnesty said there had been “dozens of deaths” in the Tehran suburb of Shahriar, likely one of the areas with the highest toll of those killed in the unrest. Shahriar had seen heavy protests.

Amnesty offered no breakdown for the deaths elsewhere in the country, though it said “the real figure is likely to be higher.” Mills said there was a “general environment of fear inside of Iran at the moment.”

“The authorities have been threatening families, some have been forced to sign undertakings that they won’t speak to the media,” she said. “Families have been forced to bury their loved ones at night under heavy security presence.”

Authorities also have been visiting hospitals, looking for patients with gunshot wounds or other injuries from the unrest, Mills said. She alleged authorities then immediately detain those with the suspicious wounds.

The demonstrations began after authorities raised minimum gasoline prices by 50% to 15,000 rials per liter. That’s 12 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. After a monthly 60-liter quota, it costs 30,000 rials a liter. That’s nearly 24 cents a liter or 90 cents a gallon. An average gallon of regular gas in the U.S. costs $2.58 by comparison, according to AAA.

Cheap gasoline is practically considered a birthright in Iran, home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves despite decades of economic woes since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Gasoline there remains among the cheapest in the world, in part to help keep costs low for its underemployed, who often drive taxis to make ends meet.

Iran’s per capita gross domestic product, often used as a rough sense of a nation’s standard of living, is just over $6,000, compared with over $62,000 in the U.S., according to the World Bank. That disparity, especially given Iran’s oil wealth, fueled the anger felt by demonstrators.

Already, Iranians have seen their savings chewed away by the rial’s collapse from 32,000 to $1 at the time of the 2015 nuclear accord to 126,000 to $1 today. Daily staples also have risen in price.

The scale of the demonstrations also remains unclear. One Iranian lawmaker said he thought that over 7,000 people had been arrested, although Iran’s top prosecutor disputed the figure without offering his own. Meanwhile, a long-detained opposition leader in Iran compared the recent crackdown of protesters to soldiers of the shah gunning down demonstrators in an event that led to the Islamic Revolution, raising the rhetorical stakes of the unrest.

On Twitter, Iranian lawmakers have expressed their anger over the lack of information, although the microblogging website remains otherwise banned in the country.

“In addition to the selective portrayal of destruction of public property, (state-run) Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting should show a few protesters being shot,” lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi of Tehran wrote sarcastically.

Meanwhile, the governor of a Tehran suburb that saw demonstrations openly acknowledged in a video interview with the state-owned IRAN newspaper that she ordered police to shoot protesters if they stormed her offices. Shahr-e Quds Gov. Leila Vaseghi also said she sent text messages to citizens telling them not to join the “rioters” and that there was a “possibility of a shooting” if they did.

“I had told (the police): ‘Shoot at anybody who crosses the gate of the governor office,’” Vaseghi said in the interview.

Story: Jon Gambrell

NAIROBI (Xinhua) — China has become an important global partner in addressing the current climate crisis as the country demonstrates concrete ways to achieve a low-carbon future, chief of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has said.

Inger Andersen, executive director of the UNEP, said China “has had a tremendous success in demonstrating climate leadership in recent years” through large investments in clean energy and technologies, electric mobility, and wide-scale land restoration.

Andersen told Xinhua in a recent interview in Nairobi, where the UNEP headquarters is based, that the UNEP is proud of its longstanding collaboration with the Chinese government, one that dates back to the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden.

The UNEP opened an office in China in 2003, she said, adding “we have been extremely proud to have established a number of strategic partnerships with the (Chinese) government, think-tanks, civil society and businesses in support of sustainable development in the country.”

Initially, cooperation between the UNEP and China focused on capacity building and awareness-raising on environmental protection, but the focus has now shifted to green development and finance, sustainable consumption, low carbon development, as well as environmental law and circularity, Andersen said.

Andersen observed that the world needs more multilateralism to tackle the current climate crisis.

“The problems we face today — especially environmental ones — are no longer confined to individual countries or regions. They are global in scope and scale. And an effective response will also be global. For that, we need a staunch multilateralism, and I am pleased to see China taking an active role in promoting this approach,” she said.

“We need China to not only be at the table, but to help bring the world together to tackle these problems common to all humanity,” she added.

Andersen said the UNEP supports nations as they come to agreements around issues that require coordinated global action.

“We host many multilateral agreements, from biodiversity and ecosystems to regional seas, from chemical waste management to protect(ing) the ozone layer,” she said.

She pointed out that the importance of environmental issues and the importance that countries place on environmental conventions were evident.

For example, at the 18th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which she attended in August in Geneva, the parties made some 300 decisions aimed at conserving and ensuring sustainable use of wildlife across the world.

According to Andersen, “effective multilateralism” will deliver climate action that ensures no one is left behind.

“Effective multilateralism is when we focus on the common ground and synergies between different multilateral agreements. It is when we adapt to new global realities, bringing into the fold private sector, local governments, young people, civil society and indigenous groups that are all pushing for climate action,” she said.

Andersen said the world is at an unprecedented time in history as countries face the triple crisis of land degradation, climate change and biodiversity loss.

But the executive director said she remains optimistic as the world tackles the issues, “because when you work on nature, when you see nature’s amazing power and get to appreciate the intricate web of life on earth, you get to see that nature will bounce back.”

Anderson said the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit and this year’s General Debate of the UN General Assembly held in September in New York made it clear that the environment is the single most important mandate at this point in history.

“At the General Assembly, an unprecedented 179 heads of delegations referenced climate change in their statements in the general debate,” she said.

“And the good thing is that the private sector, local governments, young people, civil society, indigenous groups are all pushing for climate action,” she added.

BEIJING, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that China and Russia should stand closer, always be sincere and reliable strategic partners, and give each other firm and strong strategic support amid the complex and volatile international situation.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Noting the two countries’ ties have entered a new era, Xi said that China and Russia successfully celebrated the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties this year.

This year the United States and some other Western countries have increased their interference in the internal affairs of China and Russia, threatened the sovereign security of the two countries, and impeded their economic and social development, Xi noted.

The Chinese side fully agrees with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment that this approach is utterly wrong and hurts other countries without benefiting themselves, Xi said.

“I firmly believe that no force will prevent the Chinese people and nation from marching forward,” he said, expressing his belief that the Russian people will not be affected by external interference either and they will continue to unswervingly follow their own development path.

The Chinese president called on the two countries to continue making good use of the mechanisms of strategic security consultation and institutional cooperation in law enforcement and security to strengthen strategic security communication, enhance strategic mutual trust, safeguard their respective core interests as well as their common security, and maintain regional and global peace and stability.

Hailing bilateral ties as solid and unbreakable, Patrushev said that Russia and China are comprehensive strategic partners of coordination with strategic significance, and the two countries’ cooperation in various fields has reached an unprecedented level.

A series of policies adopted by the United States have not only undermined the interests of Russia and China but also exerted a negative impact on the whole international system and order, he said.

Russia and China share the same or similar position on many major international issues, Patrushev said, calling on the two sides to continue to step up coordination, safeguard their respective sovereignty and security, maintain international strategic stability, promote multipolarization and democracy in international relations, and uphold international laws as well as a fair international order.

Earlier Monday, Guo Shengkun, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, also met with Patrushev. They also co-chaired the sixth meeting between China and Russia on institutional cooperation in law enforcement and security. ■