It’s been more than two months since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, arrested by Iran’s so-called guidance patrol for incorrectly wearing her hijab, died in police custody. The official report blamed her death on heart failure, but eyewitnesses and her family insist that she was so severely beaten that she suffered a fatal brain injury. Since then, protests have raged across Iran despite the brutality of the government’s response. Over 400 people have been killed; an unknown number of journalists and demonstrators have been imprisoned or disappeared. Hundreds have been blinded by rubber bullets and metal pellets fired into crowds of protesters. Popular athletes – soccer star Voria Ghafouri and champion climber Elnaz Rekabi – have been detained for criticizing, or appearing to criticize, the government.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun targeting children. At least 58 young Iranians have been murdered, five of them within one recent week. The government seems to believe that terror for one’s children is the most effective way to keep dissidents at home and off the streets.
