At the same time, Iran is undergoing an unprecedented level of uncertainty. The nation has been reeling from a deadly communications blackout that has persisted for over a week. The blackout comes at a time of a new round of protests that started last December and within weeks erupted into violence. Their population of nearly 90 million is effectively quarantined away from the rest of the world. This de-facto isolation not only raises serious concerns about human rights but also government accountability.
The protests initially erupted in response to various socio-economic grievances but have since turned deadly, with reports of significant casualties. Despite the economic chaos, the streets of Tehran and other such towns have remained, to everyone’s surprise, quiet. This calm comes on the heels of the past summer’s protests. The administration is vigorously working to keep their hand on the controls. It has staged counter-demonstrations welcoming security forces who died in the turmoil and provided public funerals for them.
Government Response to Protests
The country’s leadership has responded harshly to the protests, calling protesters “terrorists” and holding their own, often state-led, counter-demonstrations on a large scale to drown out dissent. President Masoud Pezeshkian has focused on condemning violence rather than addressing the ongoing communication restrictions affecting the population. The government still hasn’t made available official statistics about the deaths linked to the protests. The lack of transparency only serves to stoke speculation and breed further distrust among the citizenry.
As groups like Human Rights Watch and Frontline Defenders noted, human rights abuses have already surrounded this event. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), protesters have engaged in deadly combat with Iranian government forces, killing over 2,615. This tragic number underscores the devastating effects of the war that continues. Iranian authorities vehemently reject these numbers as inflated. They say these figures are the result of a deliberate misinformation campaign aimed to lay the ground for foreign hostile action against Iran.
“I certainly deny the numbers and figures they have said. It is an exaggeration, it is a misinformation campaign, only to find excuses, only to do another aggression against Iran.” – Abbas Araghchi
State television is already trying to get ahead of the narrative. They paint those who participate in counter-demonstrations as “the real people of Iran,” attempting to portray the protests as a fringe dissent and not as a national awakening.
Communications Blackout and State Messaging
The complete communications blackout, including unprecedented censorship, has cut most Iranians off from the internet and access to foreign media. The government, in turn, has been blasting daily one-way SMS messages across the country. These messages urge citizens not to fall victim to alleged plots by “enemies” and encourage them to report any suspicious activity. This strategy is intended to sow fear and keep a lid on public outrage.
Even as the government continues to deny anything necessary has changed, millions of Venezuelans have been left feeling disillusioned and abandoned. This absence of clear messaging and trustworthy means of receiving information has exacerbated echoes of hopelessness throughout the community. This unwillingness to confront the blackout that continues to rage and the impenetrable layer of opacity and evasion of accountability it adds only furthers their estrangement from their citizens.
Judiciary’s Stance on Protest-Related Cases
In a reactionary move to the current wave of protests, Iran’s judiciary announced that it will create special courts to hear cases stemming from the unrest first. Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, for his part, has instructed courts that there should be “no mercy” shown to those classified as “rioters.” This united hardline approach indicates an unprecedented resolve to suppress dissent. It does pose salutary questions about the fairness of any legal proceedings in such a politically-charged context.
The authorities’ response has been to deny increasingly detailed accounts in the foreign press about the use of torture against protesters, or even threats of execution. This denial has created puzzlement and skepticism among observers. Human rights defenders are especially alarmed about the potential for human rights violations to occur during the government’s current wave of repression.
