Global film figures condemn Iran government killings during protests

“Iran remained one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists in 2025, with dozens imprisoned amid severe crackdowns on independent media and dissent,” CPJ said in its 2025 annual prison census published on Wednesday.

The report said Iran’s record worsened following nationwide protests, with journalists frequently detained for covering demonstrations and dissent.

“Iran’s record worsened due to intensified repression following nationwide protests, with journalists often held in notorious facilities like Evin Prison,” the report said.

The report said Iran held five journalists in prison as of December 1, down from a peak of 55 three years earlier, but added that the country has generated the highest number of documented cases of torture and beatings against imprisoned media workers since CPJ began keeping records in 1992.

“Harsh prison conditions—including prolonged solitary confinement, denial of medical care, torture and overcrowded cells—were pervasive for Iranian journalists, many of whom faced politically motivated charges such as ‘propaganda against the state’ and ‘collaboration with hostile governments,’” the report said.

Iran has been under a near-total internet and telecommunications blackout since early January amid nationwide protests, severely restricting the flow of information from inside the country.

Internet monitoring groups including NetBlocks recorded sharp drops in connectivity across Iran as authorities sought to limit access to social media, messaging services and independent news coverage.

The Middle East and North Africa remains the region with the third-highest number of jailed journalists worldwide. CPJ said Iran is among several states where authorities routinely treat critical reporting as a security threat, using broadly defined anti-state or terrorism-related accusations to justify arrests.

The report warned that Iran continues to arrest reporters, particularly those covering protests and economic grievances. Detainees face harsh conditions, prolonged pre-trial detention and due-process violations in breach of international law, the organization said.

It said the global trend of jailing and mistreating journalists in countries including Iran not only reflects authoritarian governance but also enables corruption and abuse of power by shielding them from public scrutiny.

Through sporadic messages, rare phone calls and accounts relayed to media outlets operating outside the country, details are surfacing of civilians shot during nationwide protests that erupted earlier this month and were met with what sources describe as one of the deadliest crackdowns in the Islamic Republic in decades.

Among the cases now coming to light is the killing of a shopkeeper in the southern city of Shiraz, according to people familiar with the incident who spoke to Iran International.

Local sources said the man had sheltered protesters inside his business during demonstrations on January 8.

The shop owner, identified as Gholamreza Zareh, ran the Linda flower shop on Qadamgah Street. Witnesses said that after protesters had fled, Zareh later opened his door to assess whether the security presence had subsided. Security forces then shot him in the neck, killing him instantly, according to the accounts.

The fate of the protesters who had sought refuge in the shop remains unclear.

In a separate incident in the southwestern city of Andimeshk, a 19-year-old protester, Shahab Fallahpour, was killed by security forces during demonstrations, people familiar with the case told Iran International.

Sources said Fallahpour, a wrestler from the Shohada neighborhood, was shot on January 9 by sniper fire from a rooftop on Parto Street, without warning. His body was buried three days later, before dawn on January 12, in the presence of his parents and under the supervision of government forces, according to the accounts.

No funeral ceremony was permitted, and the family has since been pressured not to speak publicly, the sources said.

Iran International has reported that at least 12,000 people have been killed since the protests began. CBS News has cited estimates placing the death toll as high as 20,000.

Sources told Iran International on Wednesday that hospitals and morgues are facing shortages of body bags, resulting in bodies being stored in corridors and other areas.

They described heavy security deployments at medical facilities, restrictions on families’ access, and limits on the registration of information related to the dead, which they said appeared aimed at preventing the true scale of the killings from becoming public.

With communications still largely severed, the full extent of what has occurred across Iran may not be known for weeks, if ever.

Some victims were still breathing among the bodies of dead protesters seen at Tehran’s Kahrizak Forensic Medical Center after a crackdown on protests in the capital, witnesses said in messages sent to Iran International on Wednesday.

According to the accounts, witnesses saw “two piles of bodies” at Kahrizak, some of whom were still breathing, with security forces stacking bodies on top of one another.

Three eye witnesses said security forces used live ammunition and metal pellets during demonstrations in eastern Tehran on Jan. 9, leaving streets “filled with blood.”

They said the shooting took place in the area from Golbarg Street toward Haft-Hoz, adding that it was impossible to film because “bullets and pellets were coming from all directions.”

The witnesses described seeing the body of a naked man lying in a roadside drainage channel.

The eyewitnesses said they were injured but did not seek medical treatment out of fear of arrest or being shot at close range. They added that one of their friends was killed the same night.

They said clinics were overwhelmed with wounded people and that residents searching for missing relatives were forced to step over bodies.

For more than a year, Iranian political analysts, sociologists and even establishment insiders had warned that mounting economic pressure and social exhaustion were pushing the country toward a nationwide rupture.

The state, unable or unwilling to pursue reform, appeared to place its faith instead in a familiar instrument: brute force.

When unrest finally broke out, it was met with an exceptionally violent crackdown that claimed thousands of lives. The predictions came true in the worst possible way.

‘Boiling point’

In October 2025, former labor minister and government spokesman Ali Rabiei wrote in the reformist daily Sharq that Iranians were “fed up with the government’s promises.” Without meaningful economic relief, he warned, the country risked sliding into civil unrest.

A month later, sociologist Taghi Azad Armaki described the situation as “critical,” calling for national dialogue rather than denial. Accumulated social dissatisfaction, he told the moderate daily Etemad, had pushed society to its “boiling point.”

Moderate commentator Abbas Abdi went further weeks later, writing in Etemad that Iranian society had reached “the point of no return.”

State-affiliated news agencies — including Revolutionary Guards-linked Fars — did highlight economic grievances, but largely downplayed the likelihood of widespread protest, framing any potential unrest as the work of foreign actors.

A crisis mapped in advance

The clearest articulation of what lay ahead came in late December 2025, just as protests were beginning to spread and foreign-exchange and gold prices were surging.

Writing for the reformist website Rouydad24, analyst Amir Dabiri Mehr argued that Iran’s fate now hinged almost entirely on how the government chose to respond. He outlined four possible scenarios, ranging from de-escalation to catastrophe.

In the first two — economic reform or restraint by security forces — the government would seek to calm public anger without violence. Dabiri Mehr treated both as increasingly unlikely. Events soon confirmed that assessment.

The third scenario, a violent crackdown, did unfold. Security forces suppressed protests across cities including Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan and Rasht, temporarily silencing dissent through force.

Ignoring it all

Dabiri Mehr’s fourth scenario envisioned escalation: a severe crackdown combined with the portrayal of protesters as “enemies” or “foreign agents,” pushing unrest toward militarization and raising the risk of foreign intervention or broader confrontation.

He cautioned that a social media blackout would not contain anger but displace it — forcing dissent from online spaces into the streets and transforming economic frustration into a wider social movement. Repression alone, he warned at the time, would not resolve the crisis.

The tragedy now unfolding was foreseen not only by contemporary analysts but, metaphorically, by Iran’s own literary tradition.

In Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, written a millennium ago, a line captures the logic of the present moment: When a man’s fortune darkens, he does everything he should not do.

The warnings were clear. The alternatives were understood. What followed was not inevitability, but choice—and its consequences are now unfolding.

A shopkeeper who sheltered protesters was shot dead by security forces in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz during nationwide demonstrations, people familiar with the matter told Iran International in messages received on Wednesday.

Local sources said Gholamreza Zareh, the owner of the Linda flower shop on Qadamgah Street in Shiraz, was killed on the evening of Jan. 8 after giving refuge to several protesters.

They said that when Zareh later opened his door to check whether the security crackdown had ended security forces immediately shot him in the neck, killing him instantly. The fate of the fleeing protestors remained unclear.