GWYNNE DYER: With thousands of dead protesters in Iran, what will happen next? |
Protesters were massacred in Iran, with the highest estimates of over 36,500 dead
After two weeks of silence about the mass slaughter of Iranian protesters on Jan. 8 and 9, the partial restoration of internet services in the country is allowing the first plausible estimates of how bad it was to reach the international media.
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It was very bad.
Even the lowest estimate, issued by the regime itself, says that 3,117 people were killed. The highest estimate is “above 36,500” dead, which may be true but comes from Iran International, a generally accurate but clearly opposition-linked satellite TV channel based in London.
The most plausible estimates run from 22,000 to 30,304 killings in two days, mainly based on reports of hospital admissions, mortuaries and mass grave sites before the internet was fully shut down. Indeed, many executions were carried out in hospitals, targeting protesters already being treated there for shotgun wounds to the eyes or groin.
Whatever the real number, it was mass murder on a scale far exceeding any previous occasions when the regime felt threatened by popular protests (3,400 deaths in 1981-82, 1,000 killed in 1988, 72 deaths in 2009, 300-1500 killed in 2019 and 551 deaths in the........