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On Thursday, Iran went dark. Authorities shut down the internet and the ability to call abroad, cutting the country off from the rest of the world. The government’s rhetoric, initially conciliatory, quickly changed. Gone were the offers of dialogue, replaced by threats of death sentences for protesters, who the government accused of being backed by Israel and the US. What happened next was documented in grainy videos and panicked messages ferried out of the country by activists who managed to grab a momentary Starlink connection before GPS scrambling shut their line down.
Crowds of thousands have marched across the country each night, chanting “death to the dictator”, a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution.
A 19-year-old student activist said on Friday: “We are marching in thousands tonight. I saw children on the shoulders of their parents, a grandmother chanting ‘Death to Khamenei’ while she’s decked up in a chador [black robe]. Do you realise how significant this is?”
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Video emerged of riot police breaking into a hospital treating wounded protesters in the western province of Ilam on 4 January, shocking Iranians, who were outraged at the beating of patients and doctors.
At least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, including 490 protesters. The group reported that more than 10,600 people had been arrested by Iranian authorities.
Earlier, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented at least 28 people killed by authorities between 31 December and 3 January, with some shot with rifles and shotguns loaded with metal pellets.
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What little testimony came out of the country was harrowing. A protester from Tehran dashed off a message on Friday, saying that they had been beaten with sticks and watched as authorities fired live ammunition into crowds. The number of killed was “very high”, they said, before going offline again.
Video of bodies lying on a hospital floor in Tehran emerged on Friday, as human rights groups said that though they could not properly document each death, they feared massacres had been committed.
On Sunday, a video of a large medical warehouse outside a makeshift morgue in the Kahrizak area of Tehran made its way to social media, bodybags stacked inside and lining an adjacent courtyard.
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Protests continued despite the crackdown, settling into a rhythm by Sunday, demonstrators gathering in the streets and rallying under the cover of night. The world watched as the Iranian people protested, unable to send their support to the demonstrators who were cut off from outside contact.
A protester from Tehran said: “With great difficulty, thousands of us managed to get online so I could get the news to you. We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help.”