Cartoon by Adão Conde

Tactics of repression: How Iran is trying to stop Mahsa Amini protests

By Joyce Sohyun Lee, Stefanie Le, Atthar Mirza and Babak Dehghanpisheh

The Washington Post: Iran’s bold and bracing protests, stretching across an unsettled nation for more than two weeks, have been marked by defiant acts and daring slogans that challenge the country’s clerical leadership and its stifling restrictions on all aspects of social life.

Government security forces have responded with deadly, uncompromising force. At least 52 people have been killed, according to Amnesty International, including women and children.

The ongoing protests began in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who fell into a coma after being detained by the country’s hated “morality police.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed Monday that the unrest had been instigated by foreign powers and blamed protesters for the violence: “The ones who attack the police are leaving Iranian citizens defenseless against thugs, robbers and extortionists,” he said.

Khamenei gave his full backing to the security forces, signaling a further wave of repression could be coming.

To understand the extent of the government’s crackdown against protesters, The Washington Post analyzed hundreds of videos and photographs of protests, spoke to human rights activists, interviewed protesters and reviewed data collected by internet monitoring groups. The Post geolocated videos of protests in at least 22 cities — from the Kurdistan region, where the protests began, to Bandar Abbas, a port city on the Persian Gulf, to Rasht on the Caspian coast.

The investigation focused on three key tactics used by the government to crush the protests — the apparent use of live ammunition by security forces, targeted arrests and the throttling of internet service.

The Post interviewed protesters in Marivan, Balo and Tehran, who corroborated the findings. All spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by security forces.

The protester in Marivan, a city of 50,000 people in the Kurdish west, described the scene on Saturday as akin to martial law. “All of the security forces were out. … I would say more than 1,000. They filled every square and intersection and major street.”

Indiscriminate force
The Post geolocated videos from seven cities that appear to show security forces shooting at protesters. Though it was impossible to verify the type of rounds used from the videos alone, “it’s extremely likely [security forces] were using live rounds against protesters during the events of recent days and weeks,” said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, the director of Armament Research Services, who reviewed the videos for The Post.

Security forces have been firing indiscriminately at demonstrators since the start of the protests, according to 1500 Tasvir, an anti-government monitoring group. Videos recorded Sept. 17 in the Kurdish city of Saqqez — Amini’s hometown — appear to corroborate the claim. They show protesters marching through the center of the city on the same day as Amini’s funeral. They are quickly dispersed by officers on motorcycles firing in the direction of the crowd.

A video filmed on side streets nearby captures a frantic group carrying a young man, unconscious and covered in blood, into a medical facility.

Analysts with Janes, a defense intelligence group, also reviewed videos for The Post and determined that at least two videos likely showed the use of live ammunition.

In a video posted Sept. 20, officers fire pistols in the air and at retreating crowds in the northern city of Rasht. The officer to the left is likely firing off live rounds into the air where there is no point of impact, according to Andrew Galer, head of land platforms and weapons at Janes.

A video posted Sept. 23 in Tehran shows a man in army fatigues calmly taking aim and shooting a variant of an AK-47 assault rifle, according to Janes. While blank cartridges are made for the AK-47, Janes said, it has no record of any less-lethal or riot-control rounds being made for the gun. “On probability, [these] are assessed as being live rounds,” Galer concluded.

A leaked document from the general headquarters of Iran’s armed forces on Sept. 21 — obtained by Amnesty International and reviewed by The Post — ordered security forces to “severely confront” protesters. Another document, issued two days later by the commander of armed forces in Mazandaran province, went even further, ordering security forces to “confront mercilessly, and while going as far as causing deaths, any unrest by rioters and anti-Revolutionaries.”

The protesters interviewed by The Post in the western cities of Marivan and Balo told The Post they had witnessed security forces firing on demonstrators.

“Security forces fired directly at the people in Darai Square,” said the protester in Marivan, describing a crackdown on Oct. 1. “They had no intention to arrest or to calm the situation. They only wanted to shoot.”

The protester from Balo described a chilling “ambush” on Sept. 21 by the Basij, a paramilitary force under the command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Members of the Basij were already on the roofs of nearby buildings,” the protester said. “They started shooting in the air, and the crowd scattered.” Other Basij fighters came out onto the streets, shooting into the air at first, and then directly at the fleeing protesters, he told The Post.

Two young men were killed in the barrage of bullets, he said — one was shot in the stomach, another in the throat. Their deaths were corroborated by Hengaw, a Kurdish rights group, and videos from their funerals were shared with The Post >>>