"The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based advocacy organization for rights in Iran, says the figure is expected to climb, with more than 11,000 cases under investigation Tuesday as researchers seek to gather and cross-check reports from family members of the dead, data from hospitals and other evidence. That task is made more difficult by the government-imposed internet blackout at the height of the crackdown, which slowed the travel of information within Iran and to the rest of the world."
"Although The Washington Post has not independently verified the death toll, videos that have surfaced from the protests show evidence of widespread violence, as do accounts from the ground. The scale and speed of the killing in Iran are very high, said Zachariah Mampilly, a political science professor at City University of New York. Some analysts have drawn comparisons to China's response to the student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989."
"As many as 1 million people were at Tiananmen when the Chinese People's Liberation Army stormed the square on June 4 of that year, crushing protests. While China's government said 200 people were killed, 36 of them students, according to the State Department, outside estimates range into the thousands. "Tanks pursued student victims with machine guns, ran over some and smashed others like insects against walls," The Washington Post reported at the time."
Iran's security forces killed more than 6,800 people during a nationwide crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring last month. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports the toll is likely to rise as more than 11,000 cases remain under investigation while researchers cross-check family reports, hospital data and other evidence. A government-imposed internet blackout hampered information flow and complicated verification. Videos and accounts from the ground indicate widespread violence. Analysts note the scale and speed of the killings are unusually high and draw comparisons to past mass crackdowns such as Tiananmen, though Iran's unrest was geographically widespread.
Read at The Washington Post
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]