LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Iran has cut its people off from the internet for two weeks now. That digital blackout has made it incredibly difficult for images to get out of security forces attacking demonstrators. The protests started earlier this month against rising inflation and the plunging value of the country's currency. NPR's Arezou Rezvani brings us a rare voice out of Iran and an activist on a mission to get others there back online.
(SOUNDBITE OF NOTIFICATION CHIMING)
AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: The messages came early one recent morning, one after another.
(SOUNDBITE OF NOTIFICATIONS CHIMING)
REZVANI: They were voice memos from a 30-something-year-old man, someone who participated in the recent anti-government protests. He asked that we hide his identity and distort his voice. He believes Iran's security forces are hunting down anyone who speaks to foreign media about what they witnessed during the crackdown.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Through interpreter) We saw it with our own eyes. We saw the security forces with live ammunition shooting the people. We saw them shooting from the rooftops of mosques and schools. They were shooting everyone, even passersby.
REZVANI: Within a couple of days, Iran's security forces crushed the nationwide protests. And now...
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Through interpreter) I can say now the city is in a trancelike state. People don't leave their houses much. It feels as if, as the expression goes, they splashed death everywhere.
REZVANI: More than 4,600 protesters have been killed, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. But this voice out of Tehran believes the death toll is much higher by orders of magnitude.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Through interpreter) They killed and they killed and they killed. It's beyond anything you can imagine. Because of the internet blackout, you still haven't seen all the videos.
REZVANI: This protester is among Iran's 1% who's managed to stay online because he's connected to a satellite internet system through Starlink. It's part of Elon Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX, and it is illegal to use in Iran.
MEHDI YAHYANEJAD: If they find somebody with the Starlink, they potentially - they can be imprisoned.
REZVANI: That's Mehdi Yahyanejad. He's an internet freedom activist based in Los Angeles. He's the one who put NPR in touch with the protester you heard just a moment ago. Since 2022, the last time there were nationwide protests and internet throttling, he's made it his mission to get Starlink terminals smuggled into Iran.
YAHYANEJAD: It's basically smuggled in through the southern border. Some of them get through Iraqi Kurdistan, and there are other ways that people have got it in, too, which I'd rather not mention. But we think our work is critical because we are getting them to the hand of these citizen journalists and activists.
REZVANI: It's not clear exactly how many Starlink terminals there are in Iran. Digital experts estimate there are some 50,000 units in the country nowadays. But in a country of 90 million people, the few who do have Starlink are often too afraid to directly share anything online, fearful Iran's tech-savvy security forces may be able to figure out who's using it.
YAHYANEJAD: We don't know what technologies they have. There's always speculation that they might have imported some Russian technology or Chinese technology to help them with this.
REZVANI: As a work-around, some users have been sending their messages to Yahyanejad. He carefully reviews their content for any identifying information before sharing it across social media channels. I ask him to show me some of the messages he's received recently. He scrolls through different chats, some featuring videos of the protests, others with somber voice messages, and many appear blank.
YAHYANEJAD: They've been deleted. I mean, a lot of people I'm in touch with, they have switched their settings to one-hour disappearance.
REZVANI: People are afraid that at any moment, security forces could come knocking on their door or stop them on the streets and check their devices. This kind of digital stranglehold has left people with a lot of pent-up feelings, says Yahyanejad. But if the internet starts up again, if Iranians get back online en masse, he thinks they'll feel safer and emboldened to unleash a lot more of what they witnessed.
YAHYANEJAD: I got a message yesterday that someone who has lost his brother and had the whole thing on video is sitting on the video, wants to share it with the world by himself. So there are a lot of people in Iran who are keeping these videos for now, and once the internet comes back, they are going to share it themselves.
REZVANI: A potential digital revolt to come.
Arezou Rezvani, NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOE'S "TWO MOONS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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