12000 innocent lives are lost - #IranMassacre
Over the past two weeks, protests have started across Iran. Very little of what is happening is being accurately reported, and a significant amount of false information is circulating. Much of it is deliberately engineered by the Islamic Republic regime and the IRGC to buy time while they suppress the protests.
It’s been a week and the internet has been completely shut down, and there is no contact with inside Iran. This is unprecedented. Mobile communication is unavailable—text messages and landlines too. People cannot even communicate with each other inside Iran.
The last time the regime imposed a nationwide internet blackout was around six years ago. At least 1,500 people were killed during that period. It set a very grim precedent, and what is happening now is even more severe. I haven’t heard anything from my friends and family in days. Even some of my friends who are very tech-savvy—I haven’t heard anything from them.
A very small number of people had smuggled Starlink terminals in before this, which has made it possible for a very limited number of videos to come out. Why aren't there more of these? because it's difficult to smuggle, they are expensive and they are extremly risky to own or use in Iran (the regime will put you away in jail for 5 to 10 years if they find out you have one).
The reason for these blackouts is that the Islamic Republic regime ruling Iran doesn’t want any kind of exposure to their killings—so people can’t tell the world what’s happening to them.
It’s like the regime covers up the whole country with a very heavy blanket and then starts killing and shooting people under it, and their crimes go unnoticed.
The main reason I’m writing this here is that while our people are being shot, we (the Iranian diaspora) open any social media or platform and see tons of accounts claiming that we’re telling lies about a massacre happening in Iran.
To this moment, there have been reports of 12,000 people being killed in only 2 days. For those who cannot fathom the 12,000 number for #IranMassacre, I can only say that it is probably much higher. And the number will grow even more once the regime starts executing those who are detained. The regime announced that the first execution will be tomorrow. Check: #ErfanSoltani and spread his name.
I know how evil this regime is because I was a political prisoner during the 2022 protests; some of my cellmates were executed. I lived my whole life in Iran until two years ago. My friends and family are still there. I’ve received messages from them. Also, there have been many firsthand accounts from doctors in hospitals and protesters on the ground that confirm different pieces of these numbers. External sources also confirm reports of these figures. Even the Islamic Republic regime itself admits to a few thousand so far—which, based on its (full of lies) past, is a huge understatement.
There are hundreds of videos from Tehran alone showing people receiving the bodies of family members, with hundreds and thousands of bodies lying on the ground—in warehouses or in trucks.
There is a countrywide internet blackout (#DigitalBlackoutIran), making the flow of information extremely difficult. We have no media journalists recording footage of these atrocities. We rely on citizen observations and recordings, our past experience with this regime, and investigative research to build the picture.
If you want to see how the 12,000 figure surfaced, it comes from IranIntl’s sources. They also declared that they’ll be open to handing over their evidence to any relevant entities:
https://x.com/IranIntl_En/status/2011018647255322754?s=20
You can remain in disbelief and wait a few months until more videos, family records, reports, investigations, and journalists provide further evidence—while the regime hangs thousands more who are already detained.
If you want to see for yourself and can stomach it, watch the dead bodies and blood in these videos (WARNING: very upsetting):
https://x.com/Vahid/status/2010367357865136363?s=20
https://x.com/Vahid/status/2011062943043969235?s=20
https://x.com/Rastin_Research/status/2010808178120986836?s=20
https://x.com/FSeifikaran/status/2010865103239889061?s=20
https://x.com/Walterakam/status/2011032479294247308?s=20
https://x.com/Goftaniha/status/2011066849325089083?s=20
The IRGC is carrying out this massacre for Ali Khamenei, the dictator in place in Iran. They do this using military-grade weaponry against bare-handed people in the street.
It’s people standing in the street shouting—or, in the best-case scenario, throwing a rock—and those people are being shot with AK-47s or heavy machine guns like DShK.
However, there’s still lots of misinformation, disinformation, paid operative networks, and propaganda circulating against my people who are being murdered. They call our cries for help “orchestrated by the CIA” or “by Mossad,” or whatever other spooky words they can throw at us.
I don’t even know if some of my friends are dead or alive at this moment. We don’t know. I was barely able to get confirmation that my wife is alive and safe, but I’m not able to get confirmation for all of my friends.
Why did people take to the streets and start protesting?
We (the people of Iran) have been trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic regime for more than two decades now, through a number of uprisings, and every time we have faced guns and executions—and hundreds or thousands killed. Unfortunately, we cannot take down the IRGC corps (200k armed forces) with just bare hands.
The Islamic Republic regime ruling over Iran is one of the most evil groups of humans you can ever imagine. They have caused misery for the people of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and others through their terrorist proxy networks. They fund these networks and provide them with weaponry and everything needed—at the expense of the Iranian people’s lives and prosperity. Their Islamic tyranny has also forced our people in Iran to be cornered in a cut-off country, with a severe economic situation, hyperinflation, and zero human rights.
When the Islamic Republic took power, it forced women to wear hijab and dictated their lives. They have killed women simply for the fact that they may show a few strands of hair (hence the 2022 protests for Woman, Life, Freedom after the death of Mahsa Amini).
Every day people are being hit with more and more inflation. When I left Iran, $1 was equal to 30,000 IRR (which in itself was already a many-fold surge). Now it is around 2,000,000 IRR. The currency has depreciated, and so much of this depreciation happens in steps overnight. You wake up and literally overnight you have lost 20%, 40%, or at times 50% of your savings in a single day.
Do Iranians need Israeli intervention—or Israeli propaganda and American propaganda—to make us revolt against this regime? Absolutely not. There is legitimate ground for being dissatisfied with the way things are run. Every time protest is met with violence. Every time more people get killed. More anger. How can you silence someone who has lost her son, or his daughter? This builds up and erupts every time much more strongly than before.
The silence is something I cannot comprehend.
People try to voice concerns wherever any atrocity is going on. But some people living in the West, with full access to information, decide to ignore this because they think it is some master plan by intelligence agencies. We didn’t need any intelligence agency to be dissatisfied with and outraged by the Islamic Republic regime.
Some people might think this regime is against Israel, so in order to be against Israel they should support this regime. No. If you have any problem with Israel, it doesn’t change the fact that the Islamic Republic has been—and currently is—killing people. Be our voice.
And then there is misinformation and propaganda—calculated propaganda.
Good information gets out, but misinformation is heard louder, shared more often, and unfortunately is in the mainstream.
In 2020, around this time of the year in January, they shot a whole passenger plane in the sky with two rockets. Not a fighter jet—a passenger plane. 90% of the people on that plane were their own citizens. They lied for straight-up three days until foreign intelligence agencies revealed it was shot by missiles. After that they admitted it: “Yeah, we shot it with rockets, sorry.” For three days the regime tried to hide the evidence. They brought bulldozers to bury any evidence of that plane but, fortunately, international reports revealed the truth. Then, once the truth was out (and only then), the IR regime changed their narrative and declared that they actually shot it with missiles.
The Islamic Republic regime has mastered a propaganda system.
If they cannot physically eliminate dissent or physically eliminate the opposition, they hijack its intellectual software. They hijack the intellect behind it. How? By narrative capture.
Satellite technology is a good example. They tried to eliminate satellite dishes—cracking down on people just because they wanted to watch TV channels from all over the world—but they weren’t able to do it, because it was cheap and easy to smuggle. So if they cannot physically destroy it, they hijack it: sending influencers and analysts to satellite channels to spread their propaganda and agenda.
That’s why you see media influencers and personalities all over the world protecting the Islamic Republic. We know for a fact they are being funded. There have been data leaks showing ties and connections, proxies, money networks.
This is a massacre. This is a brutal situation. People are being killed in the streets. The regime has put a huge blanket over the country, silenced all voices, and with the history it has, it has shown what it does in such circumstances.
We have seen some solidarity. We have seen some voice. But we have also seen silence, denial, propaganda, and people playing into it.
Be our voice. Talk. Raise awareness. Don’t muddy the water for a regime that only buys time and kills as many people as it can.
