After filming Iran's violent crackdown, she's afraid to step out

BEIRUT: As tear gas canisters landed among protesters filling the wide boulevard, the 37-year-old beautician and her friends ran for cover. They sheltered among trees, concealed in darkness pierced only by the glow of streetlights and small fires behind them in the western Iranian city of Karaj.

Then gunfire rang out, audible in the video she was taking on her phone. "Don't be afraid," she screamed repeatedly, her voice breaking. The crowd joined at the top of their lungs: "Don't be afraid. We are all together."




"Are they using live bullets?" she cried out. "Shameless! Shameless!" Others joined in the chant, along with cries of "Death to the dictator!"

It was a moment of collective boldness on Jan 8, the night hundreds of thousands of Iranians across the country took to the streets against the cleric-led theocracy that has ruled for nearly 50 years. But after the bloodshed of that night, the beautician, like countless others, has retreated into terrified isolation. She moved in with her mother, afraid to be alone, and has huddled there, anxious and unable to sleep.

A blanket of fear has settled over Iran, she said, and a sense of grief and quiet rage has taken over. "When you look at people in the street, it feels like you are seeing walking corpses, people with no hope left to continue living," she said in a text message in late Jan.

Her videos and messages provide a raw account of the exuberance that protesters felt taking to the streets last month -- and the shock that has paralysed many after the bloodiest crackdown ever inflicted by the Islamic Republic.

Monitoring groups say at least 6,854 were killed, most on Jan 8 and 9, but they say the full number could be triple that. The clampdown since has also been unprecedented. The Associated Press received over a dozen videos, as well as text messages the beautician sent to a relative in Los Angeles. The AP is withholding the names of the beautician and her relative for their security. The AP verified the location and authenticity of her videos.

Joining the protests

When protests triggered by the plunging value of Iran's currency began in late Dec, she didn't take part at first. But when she found she could hardly even afford cooking oil, it was the last straw. She told her relative that she made the equivalent of only $40 in Dec, down from an already paltry $300-$400 average for the past year. On Jan 8, she made plans with friends to join protests.

They poured into streets

That night, Iranians poured into the streets of at least 192 cities across Iran's 31 provinces, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. These were quite possibly the biggest anti-govt rallies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The diversity of the crowds across social and economic classes was greater than in past marches.

The beautician's videos show protesters filling a main boulevard in Karaj. Their confidence bolstered by their numbers, they walk unhurriedly among the trees. Women, men and children chant, " Death to Khamenei, " referring to supreme leader Ali Khamenei. It is not clear from her videos how the violence began. She wrote to her relative that she saw nearly 20 people shot in her immediate circle. The parents of a family friend were shot and killed as they tried to help a wounded person.

Another friend's father was killed, and authorities later made his daughter pay the equivalent of $4,500 to release his body. The next night, rights groups say shooting continued in Karaj, with snipers on rooftops and more dead.

'We are all in mourning'

The beautician stepped out of the house but quickly returned, filming nothing, her relative said. She has hardly left since. She fears security agents will come to her building, she wrote.

She and her neighbours agreed not to let anyone who rings the bells. She takes tranquillisers, "but I don't truly sleep," she wrote.

Over all the years of repression, "we always kept going, strong," she wrote. Not this time. "We are all in mourning, filled with anger that we no longer even dare to shout out, for fear of our lives. Because they have no mercy." ap