Activists recording reign of terror

Group use network to document deaths in Iran protests

When videos posted on Friday appeared to show the ancestral home of the late founder of the Iranian Islamic republic on fire, state media derided the news as “a lie”.

But footage posted by 1500tasvir, an activist network, told a different story.

The incident occurred on Thursday evening in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s birth town of

Khomein, the group said, as strikes and protests over the death of Mahsa Amini shook Iran for a ninth week.

They shared footage showing flames amid the distinctive arches and other features of the residence. The truth was out.

In a country where free media is banned, 1500tasvir has emerged as a hub for independent information, developing a reputation as a dependable network. On an ordinary day, the group might share hundreds of videos to Instagram and Twitter, where its accounts have grown to more than 1.5 million and 350,000 followers.

The Sunday Telegraph interviewed two members of 1500tasvir, who spoke anonymously, to show how a small group of young volunteers is challenging the state security apparatus. “The only purpose we have is to harm the Islamic republic, in the end destroy it, as all people in Iran want and that’s why people trust us,” one activist said.

The group, whose name means 1500 windows, formed after Iran’s Bloody November protests in 2019 with the goal of creating an accurate tally of protesters killed by security forces.

Those protests had erupted nationwide after an increase in fuel prices but authorities had responded with a week-long crackdown and near-total internet blackout.

While this restricted coverage of the brutal response, 1500tasvir activists documented the death of at least 1500 protesters, hence the name.

The group’s secret volunteer network was well established when protests reignited in September after Ms Amini’s death. Its activists challenged the state media’s narrative of rioters, terrorists and agents in the pay of a western plot to foment civil war.

This year’s demonstrations have not been as deadly as 2019, nor as widespread as the 2009 Green Movement, which mobilised up to three million people at a time and lasted six months.

But the protests show no sign of abating, and what distinguishes them, activists say, is the brazenness of protesters calling for the overthrow of the regime.

“People are angrier,” one of the members said. “This time people understood from these experiences that they should defend themselves, they shouldn’t just stand there and be killed.”

They are also younger. “In 2009 it was over 25-year-olds,” the activist said. “This time it’s about teenagers, 14, 15 years old. It’s their fight.”

Of 362 deaths documented by the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, 56 were of minors, including an 8-year-old killed in Zahedan last month and a 9-year-old killed in Izeh last week.

It is documenting deaths such as these that motivates 1500tasvir. “One of the reasons people trust us is because we do not consider ourselves journalists, we’re a part of the people and we document people in their routine life,” the activist said. apartheid, said if the diamond was worn by either the Queen or the Princess of Wales next week it would “be like spitting in the face of South Africans.”