For more than two weeks, British-Iranian NHS doctor, Nima Ghadiri, has looked wearily at the undelivered messages on his phone to his loved ones in Iran. The 41-year-old has uncles, aunts and young cousins spread across the country’s two largest cities, Tehran and Isfahan.
Sitting inside the whitewashed walls of his clinic at Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Dr Ghadiri glances at his phone again. He checks WhatsApp, Signal and Instant Messenger. Still nothing.
On January 8, at around 8:30pm local time, the Islamic Regime of Iran turned off all internet and mobile signals inside the country, and blocked signal coming in from abroad.
According to human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, the internet blackout was an attempt by the Iranian leadership to cover up the massacres that took place across 8 and 9 January in the crackdown against anti-government protesters.
Due in part to the internet shutdown, it is impossible to accurately estimate the number of dead, but Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, finally admitted in a speech on Saturday that “several thousand” protesters had been killed.
However, according to medical reports collected by The Sunday Times from hospitals in Iran, at least 16,500-18,000 people have died so far – with a further 330,000-360,000 reportedly injured.
When information has been successfully smuggled out of the country, either over the border or via satellite internet, it is rarely good news.
“My cousin’s wife got shot and died,” Dan Vahdat, a healthcare CEO, tells The Independent from his company’s office in London.
“She’s like 30 years old. Young. What do you do with that? And what’s the crime? Nothing. Just walking in the street peacefully.”
Psychotherapist Shirin Amani Azari was born in Tehran but now lives in London. She has been counselling young Iranians ever since the “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement in 2022. That protest movement was sparked by the police killing of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for failing to wear a hijab properly.
Ms Azari fears for the lives of many of the people she works with: “They know that leaving their homes to go out and chant and protest, you may not come back again.”
Before the blackout, the psychotherapist would usually complete her counselling sessions over a special landline, as her clients do not trust video conferencing software for fear it could be monitored by the regime.
It is anyone’s guess when Ms Azari will be able to start offering sessions again, and how many of her clients are still alive. What is certain is that many survivors of this violent episode in Iran’s history will need serious psychological support.
For British-Iranian illustrator Roshi Rouzbehani, almost all of her family members and friends still live in Iran. Before the blackout she would speak with her mother every day, and checking in on each other was an important daily ritual. When the internet and phone services were cut off, there was no way to get in touch.
