As the deadly crackdown on protests in Iran continues, heart-wrenching stories are emerging of the victims caught in the violence. Reza, a protester in Tehran, recounted the tragic fate of his wife Maryam, who was fatally shot while they were marching together on 8 January.
“Suddenly, I felt my arm go light – there was only her jacket in my hands,” Reza told a family member, who later spoke to BBC Persian. Maryam had been struck by a bullet, the origin of which remains unknown. Exhausted, Reza carried Maryam’s body for an hour and a half before a nearby household took them in and wrapped her body in a white sheet.
Maryam is one of thousands of protesters who have been killed in the government’s brutal crackdown on the widespread demonstrations that have swept across Iran over the past three weeks. The US-based Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says it has confirmed the deaths of at least 2,400 protesters, including 12 children.
The true death toll is expected to rise further, as the country remains under a near-total internet blackout imposed by the Iranian authorities. Human rights groups have no direct access to the country, and international news organisations like the BBC are unable to report from the ground.
One young woman, speaking to BBC Persian on condition of anonymity, described last week’s events as akin to “a war”. The protesters remained “more united than ever before”, she said, but the violence had become too much for her, and she had fled the country – like many others, gripped by fear that the authorities will start a new wave of executions and prosecutions.
“I’m really afraid of what might happen to those who are still in Iran,” she added.
The protests began in the capital, Tehran, on 29 December, following a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency against the dollar. As the demonstrations reached dozens of other towns and cities, they turned against Iran’s clerical rulers.
Security forces soon launched a violent crackdown, with at least 34 protesters reported killed by 7 January, the 11th day of the unrest. However, it appears the bloodiest crackdown was last Thursday and Friday, when thousands of people took to the streets across the country and called for an end to the rule of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The information trickling out of Iran paints a grim picture of the scale of the killings, even in smaller cities and towns. In Tonekabon, a town of 50,000 people in the north, 18-year-old university student Sorena Golgun was “shot in the heart” while running from security forces, according to a family member.
Like Sorena, many of the other protesters killed were young and full of dreams. Robina Aminian, a 23-year-old fashion-design student who hoped to study in Milan, was shot dead in Tehran on Thursday. Her mother spent about six hours travelling from their home in the western city of Kermanshah to collect Robina’s body, only to be forced by security forces to bury her in a remote cemetery outside the city, with no other family or friends present.
The bodies of many protesters have been sent to the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre in Tehran, where the scenes have been so distressing that one witness, who did not want to give his real name, decided to travel almost 1,000km to a border area so he could send out video footage by using the mobile data networks of neighbouring countries.
On Saturday, the witness, Sahanand, had seen more than 2,000 bodies lying on the ground, he said. While the BBC has no means to confirm this, two newly emerged videos from Kahrizak show at least 186 bodies in one piece of footage and at least 178 bodies in the other. The true figure is likely to be much higher.
As the crackdown continues, the protesters remain defiant, but many are gripped by fear for their safety. The young woman who spoke to BBC Persian said the violence had become too much for her, and she had fled the country – like many others, uncertain of what the future holds for those still in Iran.