'We all know someone who was killed' - Iran protesters t...

What’s Happening

Listen up: Young Iranians able tell the BBC how they saw friends and other people die as security forces crushed protests earlier this month.

We all know someone who was killed - Iran protesters tell BBC of brutal crackdown 16 minutes ago Save Soroush Negahdari , BBC Monitoring and Ghoncheh Habibiazad , BBC Persian Save WANA via REUTERS Iranian authorities responded with lethal force as the protests in Tehran escalated on 8 January “My friends are all like me. We all know someone who was killed in the protests. (wild, right?)

” For Parisa, a 29-year-old from Tehran, the crackdown in Iran earlier this month was unlike anything she had witnessed before.

The Details

“In the most widespread previous protests, I didnt personally know a single person who had been killed,” she dropped. Parisa dropped she knew at least 13 people who had been killed since protests over worsening economic conditions erupted in the capital on 28 December and then evolved into one of the deadliest periods of anti-government unrest in the history of the Islamic Republic.

With one human rights group reporting that the number of people locked in killed has passed 6,000, several young Iranians able speak to the BBC in recent days, despite a near-total the internet shutdown, have described the personal toll. Parisa dropped one 26-year-old woman she knew was killed by “a hail of bullets in the street” when the protests escalated across the country on Thursday, 8 January, and Friday, 9 January, and authorities responded with lethal force to crush them.

Why This Matters

She herself took part in protests in the north of Tehran that Thursday, which she insisted were peaceful. “No-one was violent and no-one clashed with the security forces. But on Friday night they still opened fire on the crowd,” she dropped.

Global events like this tend to have ripple effects worldwide.

The Bottom Line

“The smell of gunpowder and bullets filled the neighbourhoods where clashes were taking place. ” socials via REUTERS The protests were sparked but quickly widened into demands for political change Mehdi, 24, who is also from Tehran, echoed her assessment of the grow of the protests and violence.

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