Can Iran’s protestors keep going? |
As Iran enters the third week of nationwide protests, the pace of events has become dizzying. News breaks by the minute, and, as Persians say: ‘One eye is filled with tears, the other with blood.’ We are all waiting anxiously for a change that feels both inevitable and profoundly uncertain.
For five to six consecutive days now, the Iranian regime has completely severed the country’s communication with the outside world. Not only has internet access been cut, but even ordinary landlines and direct mobile phone calls to and from Iran have become impossible. In a digital age in which nearly every aspect of daily life depends on connectivity, the blackout has erected a towering wall around Iran – one that prevents the world from seeing what is happening to protesters and ordinary citizens inside the country.
The few images that do manage to escape this blackout are so horrific that many are marked with content warnings. Bodies lying on the ground outside hospitals in Tehran. Medical centres overwhelmed with the wounded. Funeral processions for slain protesters, where chants of ‘Death to Khamenei’ accompany coffins to their graves. The anguished cries of mothers searching for the bodies of their children. Once again, these scenes make painfully clear that the regime’s approach to suppressing dissent has not changed in the slightest. Reports yesterday said that 12,000 protestors may have........