Deployment of Machine Guns in Borujerd, Physical Evidence of State Massacre in Iran

The deployment of machine gun vehicles in the streets of Borujerd recounts the narrative of hidden massacre and the deadly gap between actual figures and official accounts.

British newspaper “Sunday Times” in its latest report has unveiled the horrific and unprecedented dimensions of the suppression of Iranian people in recent weeks; a suppression that is not only security-related in nature, but structured, targeted and clearly criminal. According to this report, the number of victims far exceeds the figures that the Islamic Republic government publishes in a limited and controlled manner.

This report shows that in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 28 (January 18), Iranian physicians reported horrifying statistics. According to this report: “Data collected by staff from eight major ophthalmology hospitals and 16 emergency departments across the country shows that at least 16,500 to 18,000 people have been killed who were in hospitals, and 330,000 to 360,000 people including children and pregnant women have been injured. At least 700 to 1,000 people have also lost one of their eyes.”

Although these figures are shocking, they are consistent with the pattern of suppression observed in Iranian streets; a pattern in which direct fire, widespread use of pellet weapons and targeting the faces and eyes of protesters has become a common method.

In the same report it is stated: “Only one ophthalmology hospital in Tehran (Noor Clinic) has recorded seven thousand cases of eye injuries.”

One of the ophthalmologists present in these medical centers in describing this situation said: “Eye injuries related to pellet weapons are so many that we do not know who to treat first.”

The publication of this independent data has further exposed the deep gap between field reality and the government’s official narrative. While this horrifying report of tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injured has been released, an official Iranian Islamic Republic figure also reported that only “at least 5,000 people” were killed during the protests. The same government official, with an indifferent tone to the dimensions of the catastrophe, claimed that this figure would not change much, but images and videos coming from inside Iran tell a different story; a narrative that not only does not align with official figures, but shows complete militarization of space against unarmed citizens.

Beyond these horrifying statistics, an exclusive video from the city of Borujerd in Lorestan Province has been sent to some news agencies, showing the deployment of machine gun vehicles and military warfare equipment in the streets on Saturday, December 27, corresponding to January 17.

The person who sent this video says: “Machine gun vehicles and heavy military equipment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are deployed in the streets to further suppress the people and repeatedly announce the message ‘we will kill rioters’ through loudspeakers.”

Furthermore, some social network users residing in Tehran also recorded and published a photo on Sunday, January 18, corresponding to December 28, from the streets of Ariashahr, showing that machine gun vehicles are deployed in the street. By publishing this image they wrote: “You have attacked people with machine guns! You will all answer for it.” Under this photo in the description section it is written: “Today is Sunday, December 28, 1404, and the system has turned the street into a battlefield with machine gun vehicles.”

These published photos, which attest to the presence of military machine gun vehicles in the streets of two cities in Iran, show the full-fledged war of the Iranian government against its own people, which undoubtedly has been deployed in other cities as well to suppress people in a more horrific manner should protests resume.

The use of military weapons, explicit threats to kill citizens and the widespread documentation of permanent injuries, particularly blindness, demonstrates that the recent suppression is not a momentary reaction, but part of a deliberate policy to create terror, collective punishment and break social will.

The totality of this evidence, from independent medical reports to field images and implicit confessions by officials, presents a clear picture of an organized state crime; a crime whose attempt at minimization not only conceals the truth, but makes the direct responsibility of the Islamic Republic government even more prominent.