Kiarash had only managed a few hours of sleep since Saturday, January 10. The dull thud of three bodies collapsing around him during a protest in Tehran still echoed in his mind. “I was at Kadj Square [northwest]. We were chanting: ‘Death to [Ali] Khamenei.’ I saw a woman in a chador walk by. Then I heard: ‘Click. Click.’ A man fell to the ground next to me. The woman in the chador moved forward. I saw her pistol with a silencer. Click. Click. One bullet to the head. One bullet to the legs. A second body fell, then a third. I shouted: ‘Catch her! She’s shooting at people!’ I don’t know if it was really a woman or a man disguised under the chador. She ran off, and I lost sight of her in the crowd.”
Kiarash (who preferred not to reveal his last name) was in Iran during the recent wave of protests. He returned home to Europe on Sunday, January 11, and testified to the unprecedented scale of the crackdown orchestrated by the Islamic Republic, while access to the internet had been cut since January 8. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, an organization based in the United States, at least 2,571 people have been killed during this wave of protests, including around 100 law enforcement officers. This death toll far exceeds that of previous waves of protest in Iran over recent decades. It is also almost certainly a significant underestimate, given how fragmented information from inside the country remains.
Kiarash himself saw many lifeless bodies in Behesht-e Zahra, Tehran’s large cemetery located in the south of the city. A few hours before joining the protest on January 10, he had gone there to help identify the body of his sister-in-law’s best friend, who had been shot dead the previous day. “Write down her name: Nassim Pouraghayi, 41 years old, mother of a daughter and a son,” Kiarash wrote on WhatsApp. On Friday, January 9, Nassim and her husband stepped out onto the street in the Pounak district in western Tehran. They were walking side by side when, suddenly, Nassim knelt down. “I thought she had fainted, but when I looked at her, she was covered in blood,” her husband told Kiarash.
Dear Frenchies of lemmy, is this source anything to go by? I’m still having a hard time believing a single thing about Iran I hear from pro-war media.
They’re pretty reputable for a mainstream news media, yeah.
Ummm, that honestly means less than little to Americans.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, an organization based in the United States, at least 2,571 people have been killed during this wave of protests, including around 100 law enforcement officers.
Well they’re not going with the 6x number Bari Weiss pulled out of Israel’s ass and washed it through CBS, so maybe they’re not the worst.
Yeah, it’s not babies in ovens, but even then, I do wonder if it could be to expand the discussion to make the 2500 seem plausible. The only thing I actually trust so far is that they killed the mossad agents in Iran.
What info have you seen on Mossad?
Former US Sec of State congratulated the Mossad agents next to every Iranian protestors, for one.
This whole situation is really weird. He describes a gun fired as making “click” noises like in the movies. That’s not how a gun with a silencer actually sounds like. Such strange reports.
Idk, I’ve never heard a suppressed subsonic shot irl but I’ve seen videos, and I’ve been to protests… I don’t find it that hard to believe that one wouldn’t hear the shot in such a situation. They’re also apparently describing point blank shots where the gunshot and impact would be heard simultaneously. (also in the French article, they use the onomatopoeia “toc” which is more of an impact sound)
I agree it sounds weird though. Why the hell would they go through all that trouble to kill protesters when they already have automatic rifles and the State on their side…
Initial working hypothesis: subsonic ammunition in the context of a crowd chanting. The sound is that of bullets hitting, not shots being fired. The gun is, after all, some distance away.
I have never been shot at, least of all with subsonic bullets from a silenced gun. To validate my answer, I watched some gun nuts deliberately record getting shot at (behind a considerable amount of earth) from this combination. Start at 3:30 to skip the boredom and ads and listen to how .22 sounds (bigger projectiles will follow).
However, basing on reports that I have read so far, subsonic + silencer is a very big exception. The biggest damage was done with ordinary assault rifles, shotguns with pellets and truck mounted machine guns.
Edit:
Some folks recorded coming under fire, and the death (despite attempts to administer aid) of their co-protester. Incoming fire from rooftops sounds like clicks or mild cracks to me. They probably didn’t approach the shooters to ask if they had a supressor or silencer, subsonic or supersonic ammunition. The video is very old, from last week’s Thursday, January 8. The worst part was yet to begin. Content warning: blood and death.
Atrocity porn.
I dont trust Western media. They are manufacturing consent for regime change.
This is no different to the beheaded babies of October 7th.
There is no need to manufacture anything against a regime that uses everyday death sentences, supression and violence, especially during a time when it suddenly kills thousands of people.
The exact number of thousands is very hard to determine in the conditions of communications blackout and widespread protests. As much as I hear, getting infromation out of Iran can sometimes mean a motorcycle trip to the nearest border. Just like in case of earthquakes, when you first hear of 50 casualties and later hear of 50 000, an experienced person should be able to calculate in probabilities.
Side note: in the US, people are outraged over 1 protester getting shot.
