Echoes of Stolen Lives: Standing with the People of Iran
Statement
On December 28th, 2025, millions of people across Iran took to the streets in peaceful protest, demanding dignity, freedom, and an end to decades of repression. In response, the Islamic Republic has unleashed one of the deadliest crackdowns in its 47-year history.
According to reports from inside Iran and from human rights networks, between January 8 and 9 alone, more than 30,000 people were killed in the streets—many shot at close range, often with bullets to the head. Thousands were deliberately blinded as a tool of repression. Children, women, and young people under the age of thirty were among the dead. More than forty thousand people were injured or permanently maimed. Thousands have been arrested, and mass executions are being prepared. In 2025 alone, the regime executed over two thousand people. This is not law enforcement. It is an organized campaign of terror. It is a crime against humanity.
The assault was led by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and carried out under deliberate silence. A nationwide internet blackout plunged the country into digital darkness, crippling phone communication, erasing evidence, and preventing people from organizing or seeking help. This blackout concealed the scale of the massacre from Iranians and from the outside world until today.
That silence has largely continued. Mainstream Western media has underreported both the scale of the killings and the breadth of the protests, frequently excluding the voices of Iranians and the Iranian diaspora. Some international outlets reported from inside Iran only under regime surveillance, reproducing narratives shaped by political pressure or strategic ties. The result has been a distorted and diminished account of a mass atrocity.
The Iranian government continues to distort the narrative abroad, blaming sanctions or foreign interference while concealing the reality that this crisis stems from its own priorities: neglecting its own people, enforcing authoritarian control, and spending vast resources on ideological warfare and regional proxy conflicts.
For nearly five decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has presented itself internationally as a defender of Palestine to gain global legitimacy. This posture is strategic, not moral. Under the banner of “Islam and resistance” against Israel, the regime has exported violence across the region, weaponizing Palestinian suffering. While it projects itself as a champion abroad, it brutally oppresses, imprisons, and wages war on its own people.
This strategy has sown confusion abroad. Many in the West hesitate to condemn the IRGC’s massacre because of Iran’s claimed opposition to Israel. This confusion is not accidental. Authoritarian regimes survive by enforcing false binaries. Justice does not require choosing between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the state of Israel. We reject a world in which opposing one form of violence demands silence about another. Our concern must be with people, not states.
Global Context and Solidarity
State violence is not confined to one place. Across the world, people are suffering under systems that intimidate, repress, and dehumanize. In the United States, communities are harmed in the name of immigration enforcement. In Palestine, Israel’s genocide continues despite the ceasefire.
We condemn the ongoing genocide committed by Israel in Gaza, and we condemn the IRGC’s mass slaughter of the Iranian people. Both constitute grave violations of human rights and demand accountability from the international community.
These systems of violence reinforce one another. No innocent people—regardless of nationality, religion, or ethnicity—should be sacrificed to preserve authoritarian power.
Fascism and authoritarianism endure by dividing us. Yet our shared humanity remains. Only through global solidarity—across borders, identities, and movements—can we confront state violence, demand accountability, and imagine forms of leadership that truly serve all people.
Standing with the People of Iran: Echoes of Stolen Lives – MAPP February 7th, 2026
MAPP (Mission Art Performance Project)
Saturday, February 7th, 2026
7:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Amnesty International
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Time
Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30,000, According to Local Health Officials
The Guardian
‘I saw kids being shot, women, old people’: how a massacre unfolded in one Iranian city
The Guardian
Disappeared bodies, mass burials and ‘30,000 dead’: what is the truth of Iran’s death toll?