Tens of thousands of people held a march in Tabriz to call for autonomy for the Azerbaijan region of Iran.
During the Iran hostage crisis, violence against the Iranian government spread. Demonstrators for Ayatollah Shariat Madari and Ayatolla Khomeini stagedviolent RIOTS in TABRIZ beginning on January 4, 1980. They got worse on January 12th shown in this NBC News after the execution of 11 members of the Republican Party of the Muslim People. Khomeini's Revoluitionary Guards were blamed. NBC News correspondent Ike Seamans and crew were arrested along with other journalists for covering the violence but were able to smuggled the video out of the city. After this incident foreign journalists were banned from Tabriz. A month later all foreign journalists were kicked out of Iran.