IRANIAN PROTESTERS ON KESHAVARZ BOULEVARD IN TEHRAN. LICENSED UNDER CC0 4.0.
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Before this September, I hadn’t heard from Yara in months. They’re an Iranian journalist who has reported for the country’s most prominent newspapers and publications. We first met in New York in 2018 and bonded over the difficulties that come with reporting on Iran: they were rightly afraid of being arrested for their work, and I’ve been afraid that I will no longer be able to return to the country where I was born due to writing about it from abroad. As the Islamic Republic began to escalate the crackdowns on journalists, activists, and civil society, Yara—a pseudonym I’m using to protect their identity—was forced to leave Iran. But when their father was diagnosed with cancer, they had to return. They messaged me to say they were going back and let me know I likely wouldn’t hear from them. If the authorities knew that Yara was communicating with me, an Iranian dual national who works for the New York Times, they could accuse them of conspiracy, spying, and a whole host of other nonsensical charges. I worried about Yara, but I knew their silence meant they were safe.
In September, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini died after being detained in Tehran by the so-called Morality Police for breaking the “hijab rule.” On Twitter, a photographer named Niloofar Hamedi posted a photo of Amini unconscious in a hospital bed, with tubes coming out of her mouth, a swollen face, and dried blood on her ears. Her image enraged Iranians and sparked mass demonstrations. The protests are now in their fifth week and have spread to more than eighty cities and towns. It’s both the largest and most widespread uprising that the Islamic Republic has seen in its forty-three-year history. Many of us, familiar with the state’s history of lethal crackdowns, were waiting nervously for them to begin. Arrests have already started, as have periodic internet shutoffs. Hamedi is now in solitary confinement in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison.
On September 26, during the third week of the protests, I finally heard from Yara. They had just been arrested and interrogated at the Ministry of Intelligence. “They will take me to jail for about two years due to my reports,” Yara wrote. “But I am not scared, something like hope is rising among us, hope for changes, for women, life, freedom, for visiting you in Tehran soon.” They said it may be a month or two until they have a court date and are sent to prison. In the meantime, they wanted to collaborate on another story. They sent me their notes and wrote, “Keep our fingers crossed that the internet will work tomorrow.”