Thousands of people across the United States marched Sunday to denounce what they described as a deadly crackdown by authorities in Iran on anti-government protesters.
Several thousand demonstrators rallied in Los Angeles, home to one of the world’s largest Iranian diaspora communities, while several hundred others gathered in New York, according to journalists at the scene.
Protesters carried placards condemning what they called a “new Holocaust,” a “genocide in the making,” and the “terror” of the Iranian government.
“My heart is heavy, and my soul is crushed. I’m at a loss for words to describe how angry I am,” said Perry Faraz, 62, at the Los Angeles rally.
Faraz, a payroll manager who fled Iran in 2006, said she learned this week that a young cousin had been killed during the unrest in her home country.
“He wasn’t even 10 years old. That’s horrible,” she said.
The demonstrations follow protests that erupted in Iran in late December, initially fueled by economic hardship and later expanding into broader challenges to the country’s leadership, widely seen as the most serious in recent years.
