More established Human Rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have refrained from reporting total death counts amid the uncertainty caused by the internet blackout.
That’s fine, but they have been abundantly clear that there are ongoing country-wide massacres. HRW ten days ago, for example:
In the capital, Tehran, videos show a heavily militarized response to the protests as they grew. Human Rights Watch verified videos that began to circulate on January 11 of body bags and bodies piled up in and around the Forensic Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in Kahrizak, south of the capital. The bodies were placed there for families to identify their loved ones. Human Rights Watch counted at least 400 bodies visible in several videos from that site alone. This number is an undercount, as bodies were piled on top of each other, making counting difficult.
Witnesses also said that many bodies were at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery Complex, 600 meters from the Kahrizak morgue. One person who went to identify the body of a loved one on January 10 said: “When we got close to the [large] halls, we saw bodies piled on top of bodies. They were in body bags, and some had tags with identification details. From the size of the halls, I could estimate that between 1,500 to 2,000 bodies were held there.” The witness said that more bodies were arriving by refrigerated trucks in the late afternoon when they were leaving the cemetery.
I think based on what you wrote that you do actually care about Iran’s civilians and denounce their massacre by Khamenei’s regime but don’t want fascists to use it as a pretext for invasion, so I assume you can, in good faith, acknowledge that this BBC News article isn’t just “manufacturing consent” and that civilians really are being murdered by the thousands by an authoritarian, theocratic regime.
The Islamic Republic is under clandestine assault by the US and Israel with the help of heavily armed Kurdish infiltrators. I do not “denounce their massacre by Khamenei’s regime” because it’s unclear who is massacring and who is being massacred, and to what scale these massacres are occurring. If innocent civilians are dying it is accidental. And these accidents are occuring because the Islamic Republic is under extreme pressure from these armed infiltrators and not because of something systematically wrong with its system of government, which allows for democratic vote under clerical supervision. The United States has a similar system with democratic vote under the supervision of AIPAC.
The Islamic Republic is not against protesting. The Ayatollah recognized the initial protests as legitimate—they were in response to real economic crisis caused by US sanctions. If the US cared about Iranians, it could ease the sanctions. The problem is when these protests are co-opted by infiltrating groups with weapons.
The BBC article cites the HRANA, the NGO I mentioned in my article which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Yes, they are manufacturing consent.
That’s fine, but they have been abundantly clear that there are ongoing country-wide massacres. HRW ten days ago, for example:
I think based on what you wrote that you do actually care about Iran’s civilians and denounce their massacre by Khamenei’s regime but don’t want fascists to use it as a pretext for invasion, so I assume you can, in good faith, acknowledge that this BBC News article isn’t just “manufacturing consent” and that civilians really are being murdered by the thousands by an authoritarian, theocratic regime.
The Islamic Republic is under clandestine assault by the US and Israel with the help of heavily armed Kurdish infiltrators. I do not “denounce their massacre by Khamenei’s regime” because it’s unclear who is massacring and who is being massacred, and to what scale these massacres are occurring. If innocent civilians are dying it is accidental. And these accidents are occuring because the Islamic Republic is under extreme pressure from these armed infiltrators and not because of something systematically wrong with its system of government, which allows for democratic vote under clerical supervision. The United States has a similar system with democratic vote under the supervision of AIPAC.
The Islamic Republic is not against protesting. The Ayatollah recognized the initial protests as legitimate—they were in response to real economic crisis caused by US sanctions. If the US cared about Iranians, it could ease the sanctions. The problem is when these protests are co-opted by infiltrating groups with weapons.
The BBC article cites the HRANA, the NGO I mentioned in my article which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Yes, they are manufacturing consent.
Well that’s the first Iranian agitprop bot I’ve seen here.