Iran and Growing Massacres

By: Kayla Penhasi

[This article is a follow-up of an article from Decode It’s February Issue. For further context, read Fighting Decades of Silencing: The Anti-Government Protests in Iran here].

For decades, the Iranian people have been fighting for their freedom through protests on the streets, fighting against their authoritarian government, where their battle can be dated back to the pre-Islamic Revolution of 1979. Even after the Islamic Revolution (also known as the Iranian Revolution), the Iranian fight for freedom did not end. The autocratic rule that was combatted against was replaced with authoritarian dictatorship through a theocratic regime, which has led to the protest demonstrations of 2026 being among the Iranian’s largest yet.

Protestors in Iran have been met with great force sanctioned by their government, massacring their people and resulting in an estimated number of over 36,500 protestors killed by security forces (Iran International, 2026). The protests have spread over all of Iran’s 31 provinces (Vick, 2026), and Iranian intelligence has been carrying out colossal waves of sending protestors (which includes young children) to detention, still continuing following the most major of massacres of January 8 and 9. Detainees have been subject to torture and other risks while being entirely unreachable and missing, also with the possibility of executions at stake (Human Rights Watch, 2026). 

On January 9, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s leader, deployed the Supreme National Security Council with the order to crush the protests while Iran’s internet and phone service were simultaneously disrupted. The regime forces fired at protestors from roofs into marches alongside other ways of heavy force. The internet shutdown prevented the hospital’s staff from checking patients' medical histories. Hospitals across Iran were flooded with gunshot-wounded protestors—many of whom were already dead upon arrival at the hospital or had passed shortly after they arrived (Fassihi et al., 2026). 

Morgues in Iran were filled with lines upon lines of Iranians trying to identify their loved ones through black body bags with heads unzipped and identity cards on the deceased' s chests—for those who were able to be identified at all. Many were marked by numbers alone.

With the overcrowding of Iranian hospitals and morgues came Iranian rage by its side, altering the traditions of funerals in Iran, turning them into signs of political protest and statements to the country’s government—a signifier that the Iranian people will not back down against the fight for their freedom. Iranians, at these funerals, have been singing non-religious music and dancing as they grieved their loved ones and called for change against the brutal Islamic regime (Hay & Cole, 2026).

It is important to note that the severity of the situation in Iran is difficult to identify in its entirety, as a result of extreme censorship, which makes it increasingly challenging to examine.

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Works Cited

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Aslan, R. (2022, October 7). The Iranian People’s 100-Year Struggle for Freedom. Retrieved from Time website: https://time.com/6220776/ranian-peoples-100-year-struggle-for-freedom/ 

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