As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality
More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.
The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.
“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”
What? You don’t believe “Hossein, 21”, they named him and everything! You want to see actual evidence! You can’t believe that I’m 2026 not a single person recorded a video of said massacres on their phone?
The Iranian government cut off internet and satellite connections nationwide during the massacres. And some videos did still manage to leak out.
That’s not how satellite connection works, though? The US smuggled 6000 starlink terminals into Iran.
Frequencies can be jammed, you know…
Not country-wide…
But in all the cities where it matters
You cannot frequency jam an entire city either bruv, the way they were preventing Starlink usage was by detecting emitted radio signals of that frequency and going in person to arrest the users and confiscate the equipment.
Okay… so you admit they were heavily censoring it?
Obviously, I never doubted it, but you can’t jam 6000 starlinks, so it was still possible for videos to come out of Iran.
The internet has been back for a while now, and there’s no chance nobody could have leaked anything. Israel cut off internet power and was actively bombing every neighborhood of Gaza and footage still got out.
Don’t be silly.
Footage did get out of Iran, you just haven’t looked for it because then you’d have to reconsider your belief in the mullah’s moral pedestal
Go ahead and share that footage.
I don’t believe the Iranian government is moral or good, I just know American imperialism and genocidal war is worse.
Again, go ahead and share that footage. I find it highly unlikely that the western media reporting obscene casualty numbers in the tens of thousands isn’t sharing any of that footage and instead just quoting a random first name, but I’m open to being wrong. Go ahead and share the footage you’ve seen that I haven’t been able to find…
Why would I put effort into finding videos that I’ve already seen, just to show you when you’re already sealioning?
You can be confidently wrong, I don’t care.
Because you’re a lying piece of shit…
The people that would benefit most of showing this footage are for some mysterious reason censoring it, and you’re so concerned about the supposed crimes the Iranian government committed that you’re unwilling to share this supposed evidence you’ve seen to spread awareness while you beat your war drum and encourage a war of total destruction on millions of people and incredible devastation on the whole region.
Really, you think I’m fucking bluffing? Then how do you explain this?
Or these articles from Amnesty International, Associated Press, BBC, and Independent?
Go ahead. What BS are you gonna come up with to try to justify this authoritarian brutality?
When/where did I do that? Point to the thing I said that fits that description.
You can’t, because I didn’t. That’s just a pathetic strawman, because you can’t handle the truth that you’re wrong.
You showed 40,000 deaths ha? You showed what you think justifies starting a war that will kill hundred of thousands, displace hundreds of thousands, and effect the lives of millions?
Again, I don’t justify it, if you look at my comment history I’ve said before they I have no doubt they killed a lot of civilians, and I don’t align with the authoritarian government, but I don’t justify imperialism and even more destructive and deadly wars as a response. You’re not helping Iranians.
While you’re watching protest videos, go ahead and watch the videos of counter protesters burning Israeli and US flags. Don’t just cherry pick footage that justifies your war lust.
They didn’t kill 40k+ people, and you will not provide footage that demonstrates they did anything near that because it’s a made up lie.
Should Iran develop nukes and attack the US because ICE is shooting civilians in the street? Same justification, but you can’t wrap your head around the fact that you’re not the heroes of the world and America doesn’t have an obligation to interfere with every country however it deems fit.
We’re gonna pretend like your comment is in a vacuum and the context where you made it is irrelevant? Okay then…