When protests broke out throughout Iran in September, 26-year-old Mohammed Hassan Torkaman’s message was one in all defiance.
“Personally, if I see even one symbolic protest in Babol, I will support it,” he wrote on Twitter.
The nature-loving pupil was shot lifeless by safety forces throughout an illustration simply two days later – protests had damaged out over the demise of a younger girl in police custody who was arrested for sporting her hijab “incorrectly”.
Months on, his household say they’re nonetheless being harassed by the authorities in an try to silence them about what occurred. It is an expertise that human rights consultants say is frequent for these whose family members died on account of state violence in Iran.
For some households like Mohammad Hassan’s, nevertheless, remaining silent just isn’t an choice. And social media is offering them with a approach to memorialise and search justice for the lifeless.
Mohammad Hassan Torkaman’s story
Mohammad Hassan was a typical 26-year-old. He liked the outside, and will typically be discovered exploring the forest together with his buddies. He was fascinated by area too, protecting his residence with posters of stars and far-flung galaxies.
His fluffy white Persian cat, Pashmak, was his delight and pleasure.
His brother says he was a peaceful, type one that had nice ambitions.
“He had big ideas and wanted to make an impact in the future,” his brother stated.
Mohammed Hassan had moved to Babol 5 years in the past to check at college. So on 21 September, his household in Shahin Shahr, Isfahan, did not know he had gone out to protest.
It was solely once they obtained a anxious telephone name from one in all his buddies that they realised one thing terrible had occurred.
“I was in a terrible state of shock, so I remember everything like a nightmare,” his brother stated.
The good friend advised them that he had been calling Mohammad Hassan after he failed to show as much as his home as anticipated. An unknown voice finally picked up and stated that Mohammad Hassan had been shot.
His father, a veteran and former prisoner of struggle through the battle between Iran and Iraq, was so shocked by the information that he suffered a stroke and was taken into intensive care.
His brother says that when he went to see Mohammad Hassan’s physique within the morgue, he noticed a bullet wound in his head.
For three days, the authorities refused to launch the physique and solely did so on the situation that the household would stay quiet about the place he had been shot and held the funeral below strict safety.
But even then, their ordeal was removed from over.
“The events for the third and the seventh days were held under watchful eyes of the agents,” his brother stated.
At the fortieth day ceremony, the state of affairs escalated.
“They were attacked by the security forces, plain clothes militia using stun grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets, paintballs and batons. Many were arrested and wounded,” his brother stated.
It’s now been months since Mohammad Hassan’s demise and the memorial gatherings that adopted. But kin say the authorities are nonetheless harassing them.
“We are more or less threatened, we are monitored and controlled, some days they follow us, some nights they are stationed near our home,” his brother stated.
Digital memorialisation
Azadeh Pourzand, a human rights researcher at SOAS University of London, explains that Iranian authorities have a historical past of treating households of these killed by the state on this means as they concern the impression the killing might have.
“It’s ironic that the regime is so strong with its state violence as a repressive regime but is scared of the dead bodies it creates,” she advised Sky News.
“It’s not new to see the burial ceremonies for victims of state violence being disrupted in this way. It’s used as a tool to further harass and silence families,” she stated.
Azadeh says that for a few years, this meant that the one circumstances that might garner consideration have been these through which the sufferer was already publicly recognized or of a sure societal standing. It was due to this fact largely left to human rights organisations just like the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center to doc the tales of the entire others who died by the hands of the state.
Since 2002, the centre has run the Omid Memorial venture which is a digital archive of all of those that have been killed by the state and acts as a web based memorial.
“The project’s mission is to ensure that all victims of the state’s violation of the right to life are memorialised, that society acknowledges the harm done to them and their loved ones, to help start their healing process in the absence of justice,” stated Roya Boroumand, who runs the centre.
The creation of social media, nevertheless, has meant that people at the moment are empowered to do that themselves in ways in which they have been beforehand unable to. It signifies that social media pages devoted to the reminiscence of those that have been killed in Iran are more and more frequent on-line.
Many of those accounts are run by bereaved members of the family. Three months after Mohammad Hassan’s demise, two of his kin arrange Twitter pages that submit each day, nearly solely about Mohammad Hassan. They now have a mixed following of over 27,000.
Among the posts are footage of Mohammad Hassan as a toddler, in addition to his headstone and memorial shrine. Many embody anecdotes about Mohammad Hassan and requires justice.
The hashtag of Mohammad Hassan’s full identify in Farsi, which options in every of the posts, has been tweeted over 143,000 occasions in accordance with information collected by social listening platform TalkWalker.
“It is my duty and my family’s duty to be the voice of my brother’s unjustly shed blood. My father was the one who stood in front of Iraqi soldiers and defended his country. We learned our courage from him,” Mohammad Hassan’s brother stated.
Other accounts devoted to memorialising all of those that have died have additionally sprung up.
One web page was initially created to pay tribute to the 1,500 protesters killed in 2019. The account now creates and shares memorials for individuals who have died through the current protests and for individuals who have been executed. It has 27,000 followers on Instagram and an additional 7,000 on Twitter.
“The government of Iran wants these things not to be mentioned at all, not to be heard at all. The government media denies this at all,” the web page’s operator advised Sky News.
“I am the voice of their grieving families,” they stated.
“What we are seeing here is grassroots archiving and memorialising,” stated Azadeh Pourzand.
She explains that these memorials are additionally about attaining justice for individuals who have died.
“The ultimate goal is: we are not going to forget and we are not going to forgive. We’re not going to let our loved ones’ blood go to waste. We are going to keep it alive, we are going to remember and we are going to seek justice,” she advised Sky News.
The Data and Forensics crew is a multi-skilled unit devoted to offering clear journalism from Sky News. We collect, analyse and visualise information to inform data-driven tales. We mix conventional reporting abilities with superior evaluation of satellite tv for pc photographs, social media and different open supply data. Through multimedia storytelling we purpose to higher clarify the world whereas additionally displaying how our journalism is completed.
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