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.”
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.