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For more than two weeks, UK-Iran NHS Dr. Nima Ghadiri looked wearily. undelivered message to his loved ones by phone Iran. The 41-year-old has uncles, aunts and young cousins spread across the country’s two largest cities. Tehran and Isfahan.
Sitting in the whitewashed walls of his clinic at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Dr Gadiri glances at his phone again. He checks WhatsApp, Signal and Instant Messenger. Still nothing.
On January 8, around 8:30 pm local time, Iran’s Islamic regime turned Turn off all internet and domestic mobile signals, blocking signals from abroad.
According to human rights groups such as Amnesty International, the internet blockade is an attempt by Iranian leaders to cover up the massacre that occurred during the Jan. 8-9 crackdown. anti-government protesters.
An accurate estimate of the death toll is impossible partly due to the internet shutdown, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali KhameneiIt finally acknowledged in a speech on Saturday that “thousands” of protesters had been killed.
However, according to medical reports collected sunday times According to Iranian hospital statistics, at least 16,500-18,000 people have died so far, with another 330,000-360,000 reportedly injured.
When information is successfully smuggled across borders or via satellite internet, it’s rarely good news.
“My cousin’s wife was shot and killed,” said Healthcare CEO Dan Vahdat. independent from his corporate offices in London.
“She’s about 30 years old. Young. What are you doing with this? What’s the crime? Nothing. Just walking peacefully down the street.”
Psychotherapist Shirin Amani Azari was born in Tehran but now lives in London. She has been counseling young Iranians since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protest movement. The protest movement was sparked by the police killing of a 22-year-old woman. Massa Aminiwas arrested for not wearing a headscarf correctly.
Ms. Azari fears for the lives of many of the people she works with: “They know that if you leave your home and go out chanting and protesting, you may not come back.”
Before the blackout, the psychotherapist typically completed counseling sessions via a special landline phone because her clients distrusted the videoconferencing software and feared it would be subject to regime surveillance.
It is anyone’s guess when Ms. Azari will be able to start providing treatment again and how many of her clients are still alive. What is certain is that many survivors of this violent episode in Iran’s history will need serious psychological support.
For British-Iranian illustrator Roshi Rouzbehani, almost all of her family and friends still live in Iran. Before the blackout, she spoke to her mother every day, and checking in with each other was an important daily ritual. When internet and phone service are cut off, we can’t get in touch.
“This silence is hard even under normal circumstances, but when you are scared and don’t know if your loved one is alive or dead, it becomes unbearable,” Ms Ruzbehani said.
As those silent days stretched into a week, anxiety began to seep into every aspect of her life. She had nightmares and couldn’t concentrate.
“I feel like it’s impossible to separate my personal life from what’s going on in Iran,” she explains. She felt the only way she could respond was through work. She would draw illustrations and share them on social media in an attempt to raise awareness and “keep attention” as Iran fell silent.
After days of radio silence, her mother was finally able to call directly with the news that no one close to her was injured. Another family member visiting from Germany said they had never witnessed such brutality against protesters.
“The blackouts are part of the violence,” said Dr. Hossein Dabbagh, an assistant professor of philosophy at Northeastern University who has relatives in Iran. The internet shutdown has isolated people, prevented any help from arriving, and forced families to prepare for the worst.
Dr. Dhaba does have hope. Yes, fear empties the streets and blackouts reduce visibility, but in the long run this strategy is self-defeating, he argued, because fear highlights the regime’s inability to govern by consent.
“The gap between control and legitimacy keeps coming back and tends to widen with each crackdown,” he added.
Currently, the Iranian regime shows few signs of relaxing. According to reports, there are large military and security personnel stationed in towns and cities in these places. protest happened.
Eyewitness reports describe security forces Hospital raids arrest injured protesters. Online activity on Monday suggested the regime is Testing a more strictly filtered internet – according to watchdog NetBlocks – because any outside influence is seen by the ayatollah as a threat.
Anti-regime activists are now lobbying the Trump administration to allow U.S. satellite internet to fly over Iran. But many Iranians, including Dr. Nima Ghadiri, worry about what will happen to them if information is allowed to flow freely out of the country.
And even if millions of blocked messages are sent one day, thousands of people will no longer read them.