Exclusive: images and testimony from the January uprising, when Iranian security forces are believed to have killed thousands of men, women and children who had flocked on to the streets
After imposing a nationwide internet blackout, the Iranian regime appears to have largely obscured the mass killing of protesters. However, a photographer in Tehran has managed to share their documentation of what happened, along with the testimony of those who joined in and survived the protests.
“I was near Yaftabad [an area of Tehran] on Thursday night [8 January] and saw people pouring into the streets, masked and waiting for a spark. Everyone was walking, from a 100-year-old man to a four-year-old kid whose parents were holding his hand. My friend called me and said, ‘Milad, this means revolution.’ I told him, ‘Yeah, brother, this is it.’
“We started chanting and kept going until we reached the main road. Let me tell you we were a huge crowd. From one end of the main road to the other, it was full of people. Where we were on Thursday night, they didn’t shoot. It was just teargas and shots fired into the air.
“One guy was breaking stones and handing them to the young guys; another was making a fire and blowing into people’s eyes to ease the burning after teargas was fired. My own lungs were burning nonstop.
