She filmed Iran’s violent crackdown, now she is afraid to go out

As tear gas canisters landed among protesters filling the wide boulevard, the 37-year-old beautician and her friends ran for cover. They sheltered among trees, concealed in darkness pierced only by the glow of streetlights and small fires behind them in the western Iranian city of Karaj.

Then gunfire rang out, audible in the video she was taking on her phone. “Don’t be afraid,” she screamed repeatedly, her voice breaking. The crowd joined at the top of their lungs: “Don’t be afraid. We are all together.” “Are they using live bullets?” she cried out. “Shameless! Shameless!” Others joined in the chant, along with cries of “Death to the dictator!”

It was a moment of collective boldness on Jan. 8, the night hundreds of thousands of Iranians across the country took to the streets against the cleric-led theocracy that has ruled for nearly 50 years. But after the bloodshed of that night, the beautician, like countless others, has retreated into terrified isolation. She moved in with her mother, afraid to be alone, and has huddled there, anxious and unable to sleep.

A blanket of fear has settled over Iran, she said, and a sense of grief and quiet rage has taken over.  “When you look at people in the street, it feels like you are seeing walking corpses, people with no hope left to continue living,” she said in a text message in late January. 

Her videos and messages provide a raw account of the exuberance that protesters felt taking to the streets last month - and the shock that has paralysed many after the bloodiest crackdown ever inflicted by the Islamic Republic. Iranians attending an Anti-Government protest in Tehran, Iran      pti