Iran protesters describe personal toll of crackdown

“All my friends are like me. We all know someone who was killed in the protests.”

For Parisa, a 29-year-old from Tehran, the crackdown by security forces in Iran earlier this month was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before.

“I didn’t personally know a single person who was killed in the previous most widespread protests,” he said.

Parisa said he was aware of at least 13 people killed since protests over worsening economic conditions in the capital began on Dec. 28, turning into one of the deadliest periods of anti-government unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic.

A human rights group has reported that the number of people confirmed killed has surpassed 6,000, while scores of young Iranians who have been able to speak to the BBC in recent days despite a near-total internet shutdown have described the personal toll.

Parisa said that when protests escalated across the country on Thursday, January 8, and Friday, January 9, a 26-year-old woman she knew was killed by a “rain of bullets in the street” and authorities responded with lethal force to suppress the protests.

He himself took part in protests north of Tehran that Thursday, which he insisted were peaceful.

“No one used violence and no one clashed with the security forces. But on Friday night, they still opened fire on the crowd,” he said.

“The smell of gunpowder and lead filled the neighborhoods where clashes took place.”

Mahdi, 24, also from Tehran, repeated his assessment of the extent of the protests and violence.

“I’ve never seen anything close to this level of participation and this type of killing and violence by security forces,” he said.

“Despite Thursday’s murders [8 January] “On Friday, faced with the threat of more murders, people came out because most of them couldn’t take it anymore and had nothing left to lose,” he added.

Mehdi said he witnessed many protesters being killed at close range by security forces.

“I saw a young man killed before my eyes by two live bullets,” he said.

“Motorcyclists shot a young man in the face with a shotgun. The man fell to the ground and never got up again.”

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) said it had confirmed that at least 6,159 people had been killed so far since the unrest began, including 5,804 protesters, 92 children and 214 government loyalists. Additionally, an additional 17,000 reported deaths remain under investigation.

Hrana’s Skylar Thompson told the BBC the confirmed death toll was likely to rise.

“We are truly committed to ensuring that every piece of verified information we report is accompanied by a name and a location,” he added.

Another group, Iran Human Rights (IHR), based in Norway, warned that the final death toll could exceed 25,000.

Iranian officials said more than 3,100 people were killed last week, but the majority were security personnel or bystanders attacked by “rebels”.

Most international news organisations, including the BBC, are prohibited from reporting inside Iran. However, videos showing security forces firing live bullets into the crowd were confirmed by the BBC.

Sahar, 27, from the capital, said she knew the seven people killed.

He described how the security forces’ response to the unrest escalated rapidly on January 8.

During a protest that evening, Sahar and her friends took shelter in a nearby house after tear gas was fired.

“My friend put his head out the window to see what was going on and they shot him in the neck,” he said.

Another friend was injured by pellets and later bled to death after avoiding going to the hospital for fear of being detained, Sahar said.

Sahar said a third friend also died while being detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“Them [officers] He told his family to come to the IRGC intelligence office. “A few days later they called and said, ‘Come and get the body.'”

Sahar said live ammunition was openly and “brutally” fired by uniformed security personnel on January 9.

“They were pointing lasers at people and locals were opening car park gates for us to hide,” he said.

The communication breakdown compounded the trauma.

“There is no news right now,” Sahar said. “We had no idea what was happening to anyone because there was no internet or phone line. We could just barely get through to get news.”

Parham, 27, explained that security forces in Tehran widely used pellet guns, especially targeting the faces and eyes of protesters.

One of his friends, 23-year-old Sina, was shot in the forehead and eye on January 9.

“We took him to the hospital, but the doctor could only give us a prescription and told us to leave as soon as possible,” Parham said. he said.

He added that injured protesters constantly come to the eye hospital.

“It seemed like every 10 minutes they were bringing in someone else who had been shot with a pellet.”

A worker at the hospital’s café said he saw “70 people come in with eye injuries in one shift,” according to Parham.

Sina, who had a pellet stuck behind one of his eyes and on his forehead, said that they were afraid of being arrested at the first hospital because they had to give their identification numbers, so they went to a private eye hospital.

He said he was “lucky” compared to other people he saw at the eye hospital who “had particles all over their face and in both eyes.”

The BBC saw a medical document in Sina’s name that read “5 mm metallic foreign body” behind his eye.

Medical records of several other protesters injured by pellet gunfire were also obtained and verified by the BBC.

Protesters and activists also described authorities refusing to return the bodies of those killed to their families.

Mehdi said his friend’s cousin was killed and authorities instructed the family to either pay a large sum of money to retrieve his body or agree to have him registered as a member of the security forces.

They said, ‘Either pay 1 billion tomans’ [more than $7,000; £5,000] Let’s hand over the body to the family or you should say that he was a member of Basij and that he was a martyr for public security and against the uprisings.'”

Navid, 38, from Isfahan, said that two of his close friends, whose relatives were killed, received such an ultimatum.

“They say you have to pay the equivalent of several thousand dollars or let us give them a Basij card and they will be counted among the dead of the security forces,” his friends said.

Human rights groups have warned that this practice serves both to punish protesters’ families and to conceal the true death toll.