One year on, grief and anger over Iran protest crackdown
One year after protests that were harshly suppressed by the Iranian authorities, grief over the hundreds of mainly young lives lost is matched by anger over the lack of accountability for a crackdown whose scale is only now beginning to emerge.
The protests, of a magnitude rarely seen in Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution and the biggest since 2009 rallies over a disputed election, erupted nationwide in November 2019 after a sudden hike in fuel prices. Activists say the authorities managed to impose control only after a ruthless crackdown that, according to Amnesty International, left at least 304 people dead in a deliberate policy to shoot at demonstrators.
The harshness of the crackdown and size of the toll were concealed by an internet shutdown that activists denounced as a bid to prevent information from filtering out. Meanwhile, not a single official in Iran has faced justice over the repression, amid allegations that families who lost loved ones have been pressured into keeping silent. Those arrested during the protests, however, have faced sentences including the death penalty. “Iranian authorities have avoided any measure of accountability and continue to harass the families of those killed during the protest,” said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch.
According to a report published by Amnesty this week, Iran implemented “a near-total
internet blackout” from Nov. 16, the day after the protests began, by ordering internet service providers to shut down, with access restored only gradually from Nov. 21.
It said the shutdown prevented people from seeing shocking videos of the crackdown taken by
Iranian citizens with their phones, in what the group describes as a “web of impunity.”
Even now the scale of the suppression is still unclear, and Amnesty warns the toll is likely to exceed its figure of 304 verified deaths.
The group had posted online what it says are more than 100 verified videos taken in 31 cities in November 2019 revealing the “repeated use of firearms” against unarmed protesters and bystanders.
At least 23 of those killed were under the age of 18, Amnesty said, including teenagers like 15-yearold Mohammad Dastankhah, who was shot by security forces stationed on a roof while on his way home from school in Sadra, a city in the Shiraz region.