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As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade.
Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.”
Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags.
In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights.
The state broadcaster said the images show the danger that protests pose to Iran’s society: “There are individuals in these gatherings who want to drag ordinary people — people who have nothing to do with these events — and their families into this situation. So that they too are drawn into the chaos,” the reporter in the voice over said. “I have never seen images like these in my life before.”
Those who still support Iran’s theocratic government and those in the streets calling for its downfall agree: These are days of brutality unlike anything they have ever seen.
