Iran blackout aims to hide mass killing, Nobel laureate says

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said Iran’s authorities had imposed an organized communications blackout to hide the mass killing, calling for urgent international action.

"Iran has fallen into an organized silence," Ebadi wrote on Instagram. "Cutting the internet, paralyzing communications, intimidating witnesses and shutting down media means the government wants to carry out the killing in silence and then erase its traces."

She cited Iran International, which said it had concluded after a multi-stage review of field and medical data, accounts from families and witnesses, and information from sources close to senior security and government bodies, that at least 12,000 people were killed over two consecutive nights on Jan. 8 and 9.

Ebadi said the issue was not only the scale of the deaths but what she described as the pattern of the violence.

"This is organized killing, with direct fire, under the cover of an internet shutdown," she wrote.

She called for the immediate restoration of internet access, an independent international investigation and the documentation and prosecution of those responsible.