New photos give glimpse inside Iran’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests | Iran
After imposing a nationwide internet shutdown, the Iranian regime appears to have largely covered up the massacres of protesters. However, a photographer from Tehran managed to share his documentation of what happened, as well as the testimonies of those who participated and survived the protests.
Milad*, 23 years old, Tehran: ‘A Basiji said: “Go and tell your prince to remove these balls from your body”‘
“I was near Yaftabad [an area of Tehran] Thursday evening [8 January] and I saw people streaming into the streets, masked and waiting for a spark. Everyone was walking, from a 100-year-old man to a four-year-old child whose parents held his hand. My friend called me and said, “Milad, that means revolution. I told him, ‘Yeah, bro, that’s it.’
“We started chanting and continued until we reached the main road. Let me tell you, there was a huge crowd of us. From one end of the main road to the other, it was full of people. Where we were on Thursday night, they didn’t shoot. It was just tear gas and shots in the air.
“One guy was breaking rocks and handing them to the young people; another was making a fire and blowing into people’s eyes to lessen the burn after the tear gas was fired. My own lungs were constantly burning.
“On Friday, I returned to this same neighborhood. There were many of us and we were no longer afraid. We attacked the Basij. [state-backed militia] base and set fire to the motorcycles in front of it and its panels. The same evening I went to Salsabil [an area of Tehran] looking for my girlfriend.
“There, with my own eyes, I saw them killing people with Kalashnikovs. Two girls came and knocked on the window of our car and said: ‘Please, for the love of God, let us in, they are killing everyone.’ “We welcomed them. One of the girls got into the car and broke down crying. She said, ‘They killed four boys in front of me.’
“When I got home, several people in our neighborhood had been killed. They killed a 16-year-old kid in our neighborhood, we all know him. His back, from top to bottom, was full of pellets and he was dead. As he was dying, the Basij were standing over him. “Help me,” my friends say they heard him say, and a Basiji said, “Go tell your prince to come and take these pellets out of your body.”
Sara*, 18 years old, Isfahan: “I was waiting for the next blow to hit my head”
“The day before the call, at one of the rallies, I found myself cornered in an area surrounded by officers. I heard one of them shout, ‘Hit them.’ They started shooting pellets from the front and from behind. When we tried to run away, they arrested the people and beat them with batons.
“I panicked and fell to the ground in front of an officer. He hit me hard on the neck with a baton. I was waiting for the next blow to hit me in the head when suddenly a group of protesters – I don’t know how – pulled me from the ground and saved me.
“That night, from the beginning, the dominant song was about [Reza] Pahlavi [the son of Iran’s former shah]. On the day of the call, most of my Instagram followers posted stories and that’s when I realized the crowd was even bigger than I had imagined.
“Even a few days later, from the mouth of one of our relatives, whose job I don’t know exactly but he probably works in the guard, I understood that they were also shocked to face a huge crowd that kept growing. He said that they saw many groups coming from all the alleys and streets.
“I did not participate on Friday, but from inside the house I continually heard gunshots. Although our house is relatively far from the city’s central squares and places that might be crowded, around 10 p.m. I heard chanting. From behind the door I heard people chanting and I saw people coming from both sides of our house, the police were chasing them and shooting at them.”
Mahsa*, 30 years old, Isfahan: “I saw a police officer chasing young boys while shooting them with a handgun”
“After the protests started, I went out every day, walking around the bazaar and the central streets to see if anything was happening. In the central areas, the atmosphere was completely secure, guards and police were stationed everywhere.
“People were violently beaten and injured with tear gas and pellets and many were arrested. The atmosphere was so suffocating and they reacted so aggressively to just a small gathering that I never thought a serious gathering could form here.
“So when Pahlavi’s call came on Thursday, I decided not to leave the house. I really didn’t think that in this city, full of armed officers and plainclothes forces, a demonstration of this magnitude could take shape. But chants came from all the neighborhoods around my house. At night, I went out.
“In addition to the usual protest zones in the city center, the neighborhoods themselves were full of people. This seemed very strange to me. Everyone knows how violently and brutally this government represses people and yet families were out together. I saw a man carrying his three or four year old child, holding his wife’s hand, walking and singing, and two teenage girls who were out with their mother.
“But early Friday evening, the sound of gunfire started. You could hear ammunition being fired and explosions. I came out of the house and had barely reached the end of the street when I saw a police officer chasing seven or eight young boys while shooting at them with a handgun. It was a shocking scene.
“I went further into the neighborhood to see if anyone was hiding or injured so I could bring them to my house and help them. But the gunshots kept coming from down the street. It was so constant and so close that after a while I was afraid to go further alone and returned to the house.
“When I got closer to my house, I saw someone running towards me. At first I was afraid, but when he saw my fear, he said, ‘I’m one of us, don’t be afraid.’ He was out of breath and in bad shape. When he realized I was heading towards a house whose door wasn’t completely closed, he asked if he could come in and sit for a minute. He came into the yard and was visibly ill.
“He said that just 10 steps away, they shot a group of people in the head at the end of the street. He didn’t even know how he escaped; he lost his friends and said, ‘I think they shot everyone.’ I said, “Shot?” He said, “Killed.” They kill everyone outside.
“Later, I heard about a young man who had been shot a few blocks from our house. He was still alive, screaming that he had a wife and a small child and begging for help. But before the neighbors could reach him, several police officers stood over him and prevented anyone from helping him.
“They stayed there until he died, then they took his body away. Someone in the neighborhood said they could have killed him quickly, like many of the other wounded people they finished off, but instead they left him to suffer and bleed out to scare everyone.
“We keep talking about the number of people killed, but many more are left seriously disabled, blinded, with bullets still in their bodies that could kill them at any moment. And then there are those who have been arrested, with news of executions taking place peacefully. Just a few days ago, I learned that a friend of mine who was in the crowd had been identified, taken home, and no one knows what happened to her. has arrived.”
Hamid*, 40 years old, Tehran: “He only managed to say: “I’m burning“, and died in his father’s arms”
“I hadn’t participated in protests since 2009, but this time I saw everyone leave; it was shameful not to go, so I went. [Hamid later found out his nephew had been killed by a sniper while standing with his father at a protest.]
“As soon as my brother told me, I rushed to Karaj [a small city near Tehran where they had been protesting]. The bullet pierced his collarbone, entered his body, pierced his heart and lungs, and exited the other side. He only managed to say: “I’m burning” and died instantly in his father’s arms.
“When I arrived at the clinic, I saw 10 bodies lying on the ground. I lost my mind. In the other clinic in the area, they had stacked 200 bodies on top of each other; there was no room.
“I saw a six-year-old girl, a 70-year-old man. I saw a hundred boys whose whiskers hadn’t even appeared yet. They had all been shot in the neck, head and eyes. It was like they were taking revenge.” [because] the children [in our area] are a little reckless and courageous. It was like they were shooting pigeons.
*Names have been changed to protect their identity
