Iranian protesters collect on Enghelab (Revolution) Road throughout an indication in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 8, 2026.
Sohrab/Center East Photos / AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Sohrab/Center East Photos / AFP by way of Getty Photos
The demise toll from ongoing protests in Iran has surpassed 6,000, based on the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists Information Company.
With a latest partial lifting of the web and communication blackout, extra movies of violence and demise are leaking from the nation, whereas extra Iranians converse out about their experiences.
Over the previous few weeks, an NPR producer reached out to a number of folks in Iran to inform their story. Individuals had been terrified by the brutal authorities crackdown and would not permit us to report their voices.
Ultimately, three ladies agreed as a result of they need the world to know what is going on in Iran, on the situation that we shield their identities. Listed below are their tales:
On Jan. 8, an unemployed content material creator left her dwelling in Karaj, a suburb of Tehran, and went out onto the road.
She had heard Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the previous Shah of Iran, encourage folks to participate within the protests that had been sweeping throughout the nation. She mentioned there have been many individuals chanting anti-regime slogans.
“We noticed so many individuals. Individuals had been there with their younger youngsters, outdated mother and father, a person in a wheelchair. It was superb. The teams stored getting larger and extra assured. I’ll always remember the ecstatic feeling I had once we lit the rotten flag of the Islamic Republic on hearth.”
However then issues began to get dangerous. The content material creator says her 18-year-old neighbor was shot lifeless by safety forces. Then, authorities forces started to mow down extra protesters over the subsequent few days.
“They’ve all the time been murderous. However this time it was far more intensive and extra horrifying since they’d orders to shoot immediately.”
Throughout the identical interval, a housewife interviewed by NPR says her husband left their home in Karaj to hitch the protests. He by no means got here again.
She went to the morgue in Tehran and was instructed she’d need to pay greater than $6,000 to get her husband’s physique again and signal a doc saying he was a member of the regime’s paramilitary pressure, which he wasn’t.
“They mentioned when you contact anybody or inform anybody, we are going to take your daughters.”
The housewife says she and her daughters are very scared and do not dare depart their home. And but, she says, persons are nonetheless protesting.
“I hear my neighbors chant at night time and generally very shortly on the road. However sadly, we do not exit anymore.”
Even being in the home is just not protected, says a 3rd girl who used to work in publishing.
“They’re killing folks of their properties. The opposite day, in my alley, they pushed somebody into the trunk of a automotive and kidnapped him. None of us dared to say something as a result of I’ve seen—they simply shoot. I do not need them to kill me. I actually do not. I do not need them to shoot me.”
The previous publishing employee remembers seeing one younger protester shot lifeless.
“I noticed blood on the street. That was a human being who needed to dwell, who needed to shout his rights. His shout was all he had. Is that this the reply to cries, bullets? Why does not anybody do something?”
She thinks the protests, which started over anger at Iran’s crumbling financial system, have not modified a factor.
“Nothing. The protests solely trigger extra deaths. They shoot us and kill all of the youth. Costs have gone ever increased and we’re poorer.”
However the content material creator believes the protests should proceed.
“I would exit and get killed. However no matter occurs, there may be one factor I do know for positive, we’ve nowhere else to go. That is our dwelling. And even when it will probably’t occur for me, I need the generations after me to expertise freedom. Sure, we’ve misplaced many lives, however that is no cause to step again.”
She says, regardless of all of the lives they’ve misplaced, they can not afford to step again. Their struggle should proceed.
