Arrests of protesters continue to escalate in Iran weeks after protests, government crackdown

Iranian security forces arrived at 2 am, entering in twenty-two vehicles outside the Nakhii family’s home. They woke up the sleeping sisters Nyusha and Mona, and forced them to reveal their phone passwords. Then they both left.

These women are accused of participating in this game nationwide protests which shook Iran last week, a friend of both of them told the Associated Press, talking about the condition of his security detention as he explained the arrest of the two on January 16.

Such arrests have been taking place for weeks following this incident government abuse last month that ended the protests that wanted to end the country’s rule. Reports of raids on homes and workplaces have emerged in major cities and rural towns alike, revealing a network that has affected large sections of Iranian society. University students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and film producers have been swept up, along with figures of close conversions President Masoud Pezeshkian.

They are often held incommunicado for days or weeks and prevented from contacting family members or lawyers, according to activists who monitor the detentions. That has left desperate relatives searching for their loved ones.

The American-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of detainees at more than 50,000. The AP could not confirm the figure. Tracking down the detainees has been difficult since the Iranian authorities put the internet outand reports come out only with difficulty.

Other activist groups outside of Iran have also been working to cover these issues.

“The authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer of one of these groups, the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters.

So far, the committee has confirmed the names of more than 2,200 people arrested, using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. Those arrested include 107 university students, 82 13-year-old children, 19 lawyers and 106 doctors.

Nazarahari said the authorities were examining municipal street cameras, shop surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in protests at their homes or workplaces, where they were arrested.

Kept for weeks without contact

The protests started in late December, fueled by anger rising pricesand it soon spread throughout the country. They culminated in Jan. 8 and 9, when hundreds of thousands of people in more than 190 cities and towns across the country took to the streets.

The security forces responded by unleashing unprecedented violence. Human Rights Activists News Agency has been listed so far more than 7,000 died and say the true number is much higher. The Iranian government gave the death toll only on January 21, saying 3,117 people had been killed. The theocracy undercounts or underreports the number of people who have died in past riots.

Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, a hard-line cleric in charge of Iran’s judiciary, turned hawkish, calling the protesters “terrorists” and demanding swift punishment.

Since then, “arrests have become more widespread because they amount to social repression,” said one protester, reached by AP in Gohardasht, a middle-class neighborhood outside Iran’s capital. He said two of his relatives and three of his brother’s friends were killed in the early days of the campaign, along with many neighbors. The protester spoke and asked not to be named because he was afraid of being targeted by the authorities.

Nakhii’s sisters, Nyusha, 37, and Mona, 25, were first taken to Tehran’s. The infamous Evin prisonwhere they are allowed to contact their parents, said their friend. Later, he said, they were moved to Qarchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported conditions including overcrowding and lack of sanitation even before the collapse.

Some people whose arrests were recorded by the prisoners’ committee have disappeared from prisons. Abolfazl Jazbi’s family has not heard from him since he was arrested on January 15 at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. According to the committee, Jazbi is suffering from heavy bleeding that requires medication.

Atila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on January 29 by guards who beat him severely, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based abroad who wrote the arrest warrants.

Authorities have also taken steps to freeze bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate property belonging to protesters’ relatives or people who express their support, said Musa Barzin, Dadban’s lawyer, citing reports from families.

In past protests, the authorities sometimes followed due process and the law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities increasingly deny detainees access to legal counsel and often detain them for days or weeks before allowing any calls to family. Lawyers representing the arrested protesters also face court summonses and imprisonment, according to Dadban.

“Law enforcement is at its worst ever,” said Barzin.

Signs of disobedience continue

Despite the pressure, many civil society organizations continue to issue defiant statements.

The Writers’ Union of Iran, an independent group with a long tradition of dissent, issued a statement describing the protests as a revolt against “47 years of corruption and discrimination.”

It also announced that two of its members were arrested, including a member of its secretary.

The national council representing teachers has urged families to talk about children and students who have been arrested. “Don’t be afraid of threats from the security forces. Look to independent lawyers. Make your children’s names public,” said the statement.

The spokesperson of the council said on Sunday that they have documented the deaths of at least 200 children who were killed in this incident. That number has increased by a dozen in the past few days.

“Every day we tell ourselves that this is the last list,” wrote Mohammad Habibi in X. “But the next morning, new names came again.”

Lawyers’ associations and medical organizations have also spoken out, including Iran’s state-sanctioned doctors’ council, which has called on authorities to stop abusing medical workers.

Iran is exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi called for a “worldwide day of action” on Saturday, urging supporters to take to the streets in Munich, Los Angeles and Toronto to push for “urgent, effective measures in support of the people of Iran.”

“We meet in the hour of great danger to ask: Will the world stand with the people of Iran?” Pahlvai said at a press conference in Munich on Saturday. An annual security conference Security figures around the world and European leaders took place in the German city this weekend.

Pahlvai, who is the son of Iran’s ousted shah and is trying to position himself as a player in Iran’s future, warned that there could be more deaths in Iran “if the democracies stand by and watch.” He added that the continued survival of the Iranian government “sends a clear signal to all bullies: kill enough people and stay in power.”

Anger over the bloodshed is now adding bitterness to the economy, battered by decades of sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. The value of the currency has fallen, and inflation has risen to record levels.

Iran’s government has announced a similar move to introduce a new coupon system for essential goods. Labor and trade unions, including the national group of retirees, issued statements criticizing the economic and political crisis.

Iran and the United States

President Donald Trump has gone move the airline and other military assets in the Persian Gulf and suggested that the US could attack Iran over the peaceful killing of protesters or if Tehran starts mass killings due to protests. A America’s second largest aircraft carrier on its way to the Mideast.

Iran’s democratic regime has faced protests and threats from the US in the past, and the crackdown showed the iron grip on the country. This week, authorities have organized pro-government rallies with hundreds of thousands of people to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Still, Barzin said, he sees the ferocity of the massacre as a sign that Iran’s leadership “is afraid of being overthrown for the first time.”