Emory University has dismissed Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, the daughter of the US-sanctioned security chief of the Islamic Republic, the university confirmed to Iran International on Saturday, following growing calls for her removal.

As Iran’s authorities impose silence through violence and disconnection, what the world is witnessing is not unrest but defiance at its most basic—people refusing to disappear, to be reduced to numbers, or to surrender their names.

Iran’s near-total internet blackout since January 8 did not only shut down social media but collapsed the country’s last channels to the outside world, isolating families and sharply limiting what evidence of the crackdown could escape.

Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.

A wounded Iranian protester played dead inside a plastic body bag for three days to hide from security forces and heard what he believed to be fellow protestors being summarily executed, a rights group reported on Thursday.

Russia likely views Iran’s mass anti-regime protests with deep unease, but may ultimately adapt just as it did in Syria to preserve influence whether the Islamic Republic survives or a new political order emerges.