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Erasing the Dead: The Islamic Republic’s Battle with Records
Erasing the Dead: The Islamic Republic’s Battle with Records
If you have been following Iran in the news since the New Year, you may have noticed a dizzying range of figures circulating, particularly since Wednesday, 13 January 2026, regarding how many people have been killed.
Non-government organisations (NGOs) operating across multiple provinces have been attempting to collect and verify data. Confirming deaths during a nationwide communications blackout is slow and dangerous. Even so, on 13 January 2026, CBS News reported estimates suggesting between 12,000 and 20,000 deaths.
For those familiar with the Islamic Republic’s tactics, the lack of clarity is neither surprising nor accidental. The bitter reality is that we may never know the true scale of the crimes committed since the uprising began on 28 December 2025.
This strategy is not new.
In November 2019, after a sudden increase in fuel prices pushed young people into the streets demanding an end to the regime, the state responded with extreme violence and imposed a near-total internet blackout for seven days. No one outside the country could contact those inside. Reporting ground realities became almost impossible.
To this day, it is unclear how many lives were lost. It is broadly estimated that around 1,500 people were killed. Many remain unidentified. Families continue to live without answers, unsure whether their loved ones were imprisoned or killed, and if killed, where they are buried.
In 2022, following the death in custody of Mahsa “Jina” Amini, protests spread nationwide and lasted for months. Internet access was restricted but not cut to the extent seen in 2019. What changed was not the regime’s brutality, but the methods it used to obscure it.
During the twelve-day conflict with Israel in 2025, the internet was again shut down, this time for roughly 48 hours. The regime claimed the blackout was necessary to protect against Israeli surveillance. In reality, it served a familiar purpose: controlling the narrative. Civilian casualties from that period remain unclear.
Every minute of an internet blackout gives the regime space to erase evidence.
Today, instead of videos filmed by people on the streets, we see regime representatives invited onto international talk shows to downplay violence. State-controlled media releases footage of staged gatherings framed as anti-American or anti-Israel protests, while the real events remain hidden.
My work with protesters from 2022 offers insight into what lies beneath this manufactured calm.
The regime’s refusal to cooperate with independent investigative bodies, including the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, forces an over-reliance on eyewitness testimony and partial identification. This serves not only to hide the extent of their crimes, but it also works to discredit witnesses and victims. Not having clear evidence to back up claims makes it difficult to make a case. This leaves room for the regime to discredit accusers.
In November 2022, The New York Times reported warnings from ophthalmologists in Tehran about an unusually high number of eye injuries. At the time, the figure cited was 580 cases.
Today, many organisations report lower, more “conservative” numbers, the most reliable being those independently confirmed by Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO). Confirmation requires victims to identify themselves, or for their injuries to be formally recorded as protest-related.
This is where the systems that we rely on for reliable data collapse.
Hospitals were not admitting patients whose eye injuries were linked to protests. Medical staff feared prosecution for assisting dissidents. Victims feared being reported to authorities.
I personally spoke to multiple victims treated at Farabi Eye Hospital in Tehran. All described being surrounded by people with severe eye injuries. Those who I was in contact with reported having told the hospital staff they had been injured in workplace accidents.
The result of this fear is a reduction to the official record of protest-related eye injuries, despite overwhelming eyewitness testimony. Hospitals were overwhelmed, yet the data does not exist. This then also creates difficulty for victims to file legal cases against the government forces responsible for their injuries as proper protocol has not been followed for the conservation of evidence.
The same manipulation applies to fatalities.
The family of a young man killed in Tehran during the 2022 protests described travelling from Zahedan to search for their missing child. They were told they would not receive his body unless they agreed to list a different date of death on his tombstone. A date that would make his death seem unrelated to protests.
Changing records is not a bureaucratic error, it is policy. Official death tolls from 2022 reflect only what NGOs were able to verify. Many families are likely remaining silent for fear of prosecution, while others will never know the truth of what happened to their children.
In 2026, the scale of killing appears to have exceeded the regime’s capacity to conceal it. The Ayatollah made multiple threatening decrees against the protesters and by 8 January 2026, live ammunition was being used against protesters whose demands were unequivocal: an end to the Islamic Republic.
Since its inception, this regime has governed through paranoia and terror. Footage has emerged of hospitals being attacked. On 16 January 2026, images circulated of protesters in body bags, still attached to medical equipment, with fatal head wounds. Many have interpreted this as evidence that some protesters were killed while receiving medical treatment.
Verification is difficult. Independent investigations are prohibited. What remains are blurred images and fragments of truth.
History tells us that it is likely that not all of the dead were protesters.
In 2022, five-year-old Benita Kiani Falavarjani was struck in the eye by a pellet while standing on her grandparents’ balcony in Isfahan. Nine-year-old Kian Pirfalak was killed when security forces opened fire on his family’s car as they returned from an after-school activity in Izeh. Kian Pirfalak’s case was particularly heartbreaking due to the fact that his mother, being afraid that the authorities would prevent her from burying her child, was forced to keep his body in the house overnight, covered in ice that the family was able to gather from neighbours.
Now in 2026, multiple sources report that the regime is withholding the bodies of those killed. Families report being asked to pay between $2,000 and $20,000 to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones, or to falsely state that the deceased worked for government Basiji (paramilitary) forces and was killed by “rioters.”
In an economy already devastated, many families have no choice but to comply. This not only distorts statistics, but risks implicating innocent civilians in fabricated crimes. Crimes which under Sharia Law, carry a death sentence.
The consequences are not theoretical. The case known as Khane Isfahan which had been framed around the death of a Basiji agent during 2022 protests, ended with the execution of Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi, and Saeed Yaqoubi, despite video evidence of their innocence.
The international community must demand independent investigations into all recorded deaths to confirm identities, causes of death, and to rule out friendly fire among government forces.
Those of us who have lived under this regime understand that no data it provides can be trusted without independent verification. Information released during an internet blackout, while victims are silenced, has limited credibility.
After the crisis is over, independent investigators may need to look at other forms of record keeping for a glimpse into the reality of how many have been killed, or left permanently disabled. Victim and expert testimony, along with other official records such as number of deaths recorded overall for a calendar year, number of injuries caused by projectiles, the demand levels for medication and any other records that can provide a broader statistical snapshot. These will not provide exact numbers but would be able to show the potential magnitude. For example, open data available on IranOpenData.org shows a spike in deaths in 2019 after two stable years prior.
Iran’s current situation does not afford the luxury of clarity. What we know is this: under cover of an internet blackout, the regime is committing horrific crimes and actively destroying evidence.
The world must continue to demand transparency and the immediate restoration of internet access—so the people of Iran can tell the world what they have witnessed since 28 December 2025.
For further information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Iranian_protests
https://iranhr.net/en/articles/6205/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/world/asia/iran-protesters-eye-injuries.html
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