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Exclusive: images and testimony from the January uprising, when Iranian security forces are believed to have killed thousands of men, women and children who had flocked on to the streets
After imposing a nationwide internet blackout, the Iranian regime appears to have largely obscured the mass killing of protesters. However, a photographer in Tehran has managed to share their documentation of what happened, along with the testimony of those who joined in and survived the protests.
Milad*, 23, Tehran: ‘A Basiji said, “Go tell your prince to pull these pellets out of your body”’
“I was near Yaftabad [an area of Tehran] on Thursday night [8 January] and saw people pouring into the streets, masked and waiting for a spark. Everyone was walking, from a 100-year-old man to a four-year-old kid whose parents were holding his hand. My friend called me and said, ‘Milad, this means revolution.’ I told him, ‘Yeah, brother, this is it.’
“We started chanting and kept going until we reached the main road. Let me tell you we were a huge crowd. 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 teargas and shots fired into the air.
“One guy was breaking stones and handing them to the young guys; another was making a fire and blowing into people’s eyes to ease the burning after teargas was fired. My own lungs were burning nonstop.
“On Friday, I went back to that same neighbourhood. There were a lot 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 signs. That same night, I went to Salsabil [an area of Tehran] to look for my girlfriend.
“There, with my own eyes, I saw them killing people with Kalashnikovs. Two girls came and knocked on our car window and said, ‘Please, for God’s sake, let us in, they’re killing everyone.’ We took them in. One of the girls got into the car and broke down crying. She said, ‘They killed four boys right in front of my eyes.’
“When I got back home, several people in our own neighbourhood had been killed. They killed a 16-year-old kid in our area, we all know him. His back, from top to bottom, was full of pellets and he was dead. While he was dying, the Basij were standing over him. ‘Help me,’ my friends say they heard him say, and a Basiji replied, ‘Go tell your prince to come and pull these pellets out of your body.’”
Sara*, 18, Isfahan: ‘I was waiting for the next blow to hit my head’
“The day before the call, at one of the gatherings, I got trapped in a place surrounded by officers. I heard one of them shout, ‘Hit them.’ They started firing pellets from the front and behind. When we tried to run away, they arrested people and beat them with batons.
“I panicked and fell to the ground in front of an officer. He hit my neck hard with a baton. I was waiting for the next blow to hit my head when suddenly a group of protesters – I don’t know how – pulled me up from the ground and saved me.
“That night, from the very beginning, the dominant chant 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 how I realised the crowd was even larger than I had imagined.
“Even a few days later, from the mouth of one of our relatives, whose exact job I don’t know but he probably works in the guard, I understood that they were also shocked by facing a huge crowd that kept growing. He said they kept seeing numerous groups coming from every alley and street.
“I didn’t participate on Friday, but from inside the house I continuously heard gunfire. Although our house is relatively far from the central squares of the city and places that could get crowded, at about 10pm I heard chants. From behind the door I heard people chanting and saw people coming from both sides of our house, officers were chasing and shooting at them.”
Mahsa*, 30, Isfahan: ‘I saw an officer chasing young boys while firing a handgun at them’
“After the protests had 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 securitised, guards and police officers were stationed everywhere.
“People were violently beaten and injured with teargas 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 the call from Pahlavi came on Thursday, I decided not to leave the house. I truly did not think that in this city, filled with armed officers and plainclothes forces, such a large protest could take shape. But chants were coming from all the neighbourhoods around my house. At night, I went outside.
“As well as the usual protest areas in the city centre, the neighbourhoods themselves were full of people. This was very strange to me. Everyone knows how violently and brutally this government suppresses people and yet families were coming out together. I saw a man carrying his three- or four-year-old child, holding his wife’s hand, walking and chanting, and two teenage girls who had come out with their mother.
“But from early evening on Friday, the sound of gunfire began. You could hear ammunition being fired and explosions. I went out of the house and hadn’t even reached the end of the street when I saw an officer chasing seven or eight young boys while firing a handgun at them. It was a shocking scene.
“I went deeper into the neighbourhood to see if anyone was hiding or injured so I could bring them into my house and help them. But gunfire kept coming from the end of the street. It was so constant and so close that after a while I got scared to go any further alone and turned back towards home.
“When I got close to my house, I saw someone running toward me. At first I was scared, but when he saw my fear, he said, ‘I’m one of us, don’t be scared.’ He was out of breath and in bad shape. When he realised I was heading toward a house whose door wasn’t fully closed, he asked if he could come in and sit for a minute. He came into the yard and was clearly unwell.
“He said that just 10 steps away, they had shot a group of people in the head at the end of the street. He didn’t even know how he had escaped; he had lost his friends and said, ‘I think they shot everyone.’ I said, ‘Shot?’ He said, ‘Killed. They’re killing anyone who’s outside.’
“Later, I heard about a young man who was shot a few streets from us. He was still alive, screaming that he had a wife and a small child and begging for help. But before neighbours could reach him, several officers stood over him and prevented anyone from helping.
“They stood there until he died, and then they took his body away. Someone from the neighbourhood said they could have just killed him quickly, like many other wounded people they finished off, but instead they let him suffer and bleed to death to scare everyone else.
“We keep talking about the number of people killed, but many others have been left with severe disabilities, blinded, with pellets still in their bodies that could kill them at any moment. And then there are those who were arrested, with news of executions being carried out quietly. Just a few days ago, I heard that one of my friends who had been in the crowd was identified, taken from her home, and no one knows what has happened to her.”
Hamid*, 40, Tehran: ‘He only managed to say, “I’m burning”, and died in his father’s arms’
“I hadn’t gone into the middle of protests since 2009, but this time I saw everyone going; it felt 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 tore through 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 on the spot in his father’s arms.
“When I got to the clinic, I saw 10 bodies lying on the ground. My mind snapped. At the other clinic in that area, they had stacked 200 bodies on top of each other; there was no space.
“I saw a six-year-old girl, a 70-year-old man. I saw a hundred boys whose moustaches hadn’t even come in yet. They’d all been shot in the neck, the head and the eyes. It’s like they were taking revenge [because] the kids [in our area] are a bit reckless and brave. It was like they were shooting pigeons.”
* Names have been changed to protect their identities
