NEWS CENTER – Four months after nationwide protests began following the death of Jina Amini and a popular uprising began with the slogan “Jin Jiyan Azadî ,” the voices of wounded protesters who lost their eyesight during the protests are becoming more frequent. Earlier, a group of doctors had warned about the high number of demonstrators shot in the head, face and eyes by the fascist Iranian regime; now they have become storytellers themselves, reporting through one eye about their life and struggle against the world.
Whether they stayed in Iran or left their homeland, the photos of young girls and boys on virtual media are full of diaries and different experiences. Some describe the last pictures their eyes took during the protests, others their faces before they were injured. One group has turned their wounds, which are documents of crime, into tools to continue the struggle.
Experiences with eyeliner: “When I wanted to put eyeliner on my right eye, I had to close my eye and everything turned black.”
Or an experience while driving: “People used to say you had beautiful eyes. But the hardest thing is when you forget and remember what happened… I’ve been behind the wheel for a while with some difficulties. Yesterday I noticed that my glasses were dirty. (…) I cleaned the glass with a damaged eye. I forgot… Putting the glasses on I found that it didn’t affect my work. I broke down…”
According to research by our agency, there are currently people in various cities in Iran who have suffered serious injuries to their faces and eyes during the nationwide protests. Some of them told their stories under different pseudonyms. We will share these posts with you from time to time.
While there is speculation about how many bullets were fired at the protesters’ faces and eyes, Hossein Kermanpour, head of the emergency department at Tehran’s Sinai Hospital, said in an interview with Ham Mihan newspaper that injuries sustained during the protests came from bullets “first hitting the eye and then the muscles” .
Various doctors had previously written letters warning that the regime forces were deliberately shooting demonstrators in the eyes. In November 2022, a report citing doctors from three hospitals in Tehran said those doctors had treated at least 500 protesters with serious eye injuries. In addition, doctors in Sinê province had reported at least 80 cases of serious eye injuries in demonstrators by that time.
In November of the same year, 120 experts and professors in the field of the retina wrote a letter to Mahmoud Jabarvand, Secretary General of the Ophthalmological Society of Iran, demanding that the consequences of shotgun and paintball shots be taken into account.
In December 2022, The Guardian magazine, in a report based on interviews with doctors and nurses, wrote that regime forces frequently shoot women in the face, breasts and genitals.
All these letters and communications show that the authorities of the Islamic Republic and their supporters were aware of this practice but took no action to prevent this tragedy and that Hossein Kermanpour was fired based on his statements.
Another photo of Farida Salvatipour, who lost both eyes according to the published report, shows at least 18 bullets of the same type at the impact site.
NC// Hêmin Bêkes
