In the aftermath of Iran’s brutal massacre on January 8, 9 and 10 this year as Tehran’s regime launched a bloody crackdown on protesters around the country, what many Iranians describe as a “sea of blood” now separates the public from the Islamic government that rules them. While official media have reported a death toll of 36,500 from the protests that started in December, scattered accounts from civic groups and grassroots networks suggest that more than 85,000 people were killed in the streets over the course of those three nights alone. According to eyewitnesses, many of those killed had been participating in peaceful demonstrations alongside their families. But as the regime turned off the internet and the country descended into digital darkness, these peaceful demonstrators were confronted with tanks, heavy machine guns, DShK anti-aircraft weapons and other military-grade firearms deployed by paramilitary groups, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the army and the Basij militia.
To convey the scale of the violence that ensued, some activists have compared it to the approximately 140,000 people killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Yet what followed those three nights marked not the end of the terror, but the beginning of a new, quieter and more methodical phase of repression. Among activists and survivors, this stage is described with two words: “clean-up” and “completion.” “Clean-up” refers to the removal and concealment of bodies. “Completion” refers to the elimination of detainees. What followed the January killings was not a single wave of repression, but a structured sequence – legal, extrajudicial and covert – aimed at eliminating both people and evidence. Executions, secret detention facilities, suspicious post-release deaths, enforced disappearances and clandestine burials appear not as isolated incidents, but as interconnected elements of a broader system. On 13 January Donald Trump promised the Iranian people: “help is on the way,” adding that if any protesters were killed, he would order an attack on Iran. Yet just two days later, he pulled back from an attack, declaring: “I thank the Iranian government for not executing approximately 800 protesters.”
According to the US President, the leadership of the Islamic Republic had cancelled all executions that were scheduled to be carried out that week. However, while representatives of the Iranian government and advocacy networks aligned with it continue to assert that “no one has been executed in Iran,” reports from civil society organisations, independent media outlets, and domestic human rights monitors indicate a markedly different reality. Dozens have already been executed, hundreds remain on death row, and the fate of thousands more remains unknown. On 5 February, Deutsche Welle, citing the Human Rights Organisation of Iran, reported that many detainees were being held “in detention centres, prisons, and unofficial or secret facilities,” where access for families and lawyers is severely restricted. The news channel “Iran_Azadi_e” reported that at least 341 people were executed in January alone, adding: “This marks the fourth consecutive month in which the number of executions has exceeded 300.” These figures align with scattered reports emerging from various prisons across the country.
Source: CBNNews