Iranian protesters collect on Enghelab (Revolution) Avenue throughout an illustration in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 8, 2026.
Sohrab/Center East Photographs / AFP through Getty Photographs
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Sohrab/Center East Photographs / AFP through Getty Photographs
The dying toll from ongoing protests in Iran has surpassed 6,000, in keeping with the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists Information Company.
With a current partial lifting of the web and communication blackout, extra movies of violence and dying are leaking from the nation, whereas extra Iranians communicate out about their experiences.
Over the previous few weeks, an NPR producer reached out to a number of folks in Iran to inform their story. Individuals had been terrified by the brutal authorities crackdown and would not enable us to file their voices.
Ultimately, three girls agreed as a result of they need the world to know what is going on in Iran, on the situation that we defend their identities. Listed below are their tales:
On Jan. 8, an unemployed content material creator left her house in Karaj, a suburb of Tehran, and went out onto the road.
She had heard Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the previous Shah of Iran, encourage folks to participate within the protests that had been sweeping throughout the nation. She stated there have been many individuals chanting anti-regime slogans.
“We saw so many people. People were there with their young kids, old parents, a man in a wheelchair. It was amazing. The groups kept getting bigger and more confident. I will never forget the ecstatic feeling I had when we lit the rotten flag of the Islamic Republic on fire.”
However then issues began to get unhealthy. The content material creator says her 18-year-old neighbor was shot useless by safety forces. Then, authorities forces started to mow down extra protesters over the subsequent few days.
“They have always been murderous. But this time it was way more extensive and more horrifying since they had orders to shoot directly.”
Throughout the identical interval, a housewife interviewed by NPR says her husband left their home in Karaj to affix the protests. He by no means got here again.
She went to the morgue in Tehran and was instructed she’d need to pay greater than $6,000 to get her husband’s physique again and signal a doc saying he was a member of the regime’s paramilitary pressure, which he wasn’t.
“They said if you contact anyone or tell anyone, we will take your daughters.”
The housewife says she and her daughters are very scared and do not dare go away their home. And but, she says, individuals are nonetheless protesting.
“I hear my neighbors chant at night and sometimes very shortly on the street. But unfortunately, we don’t go out anymore.”
Even being in the home shouldn’t be secure, says a 3rd lady who used to work in publishing.
“They are killing people in their homes. The other day, in my alley, they pushed someone into the trunk of a car and kidnapped him. None of us dared to say anything because I’ve seen—they easily shoot. I don’t want them to kill me. I really don’t. I don’t want them to shoot me.”
The previous publishing employee remembers seeing one younger protester shot useless.
“I saw blood in the street. That was a human being who wanted to live, who wanted to shout his rights. His shout was all he had. Is this the answer to cries, bullets? Why doesn’t anyone do anything?”
She thinks the protests, which started over anger at Iran’s crumbling financial system, have not modified a factor.
“Nothing. The protests only cause more deaths. They shoot us and kill all the youth. Prices have gone ever higher and we are poorer.”
However the content material creator believes the protests should proceed.
“I might go out and get killed. But whatever happens, there is one thing I know for sure, we have nowhere else to go. This is our home. And even if it can’t happen for me, I want the generations after me to experience freedom. Yes, we have lost many lives, but this is no reason to step back.”
She says, regardless of all of the lives they’ve misplaced, they can not afford to step again. Their combat should proceed.
