Iran protests: Teen’s bravery offers glimmer of hope as violent crackdown and internet restrictions continue

Published

3 years ago

December 23, 2022

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In her sunshine yellow coat, a 17-year-old girl clambered on top of a car and threw her hands in the air – fingers spread to show V for victory – and the crowd erupted in a loud cheer.

Sonia Sharifi had just been released from the clutches of Iranian detention.

It is the fourth month of protests in Iran and the levels of violence and intimidation facing those calling for revolution are at their highest since the movement began.

The risks for those involved are huge, with some protesters now leaving their phones at home to minimise the brutality they could face if they are arrested.

This may be why it appears less video evidence of the protests has been emerging from the country in recent weeks.

Despite the danger, video verified by Sky News shows the moment Sonia’s family, friends and neighbours gathered in the streets of Abdanan to celebrate her homecoming when she was released on bail. It is blurred to keep their identities safe.

Some people were so overwhelmed with happiness they began to spontaneously dance in the street.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network report that this teenage girl was dragged from her grandmother’s house in November, beaten and forced into a false confession admitting to making Molotov cocktails and writing dangerous slogans.

Iran’s notorious Revolutionary Guards have sent messages on an encrypted messaging app monitored by Sky News accusing “hostile media” of “lying” about details of her arrest. They provided no evidence for their claims.

Sonia’s defiant pose, struck seemingly without fear of the authorities who detained her, spread quickly across social media in the middle of December.

The image of her brave stance was treated by many Iranians online as a symbol of hope at a time when the state had executed two protesters and more than 500 demonstrators had lost their lives.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) report that around 70 of those who died were children. The group’s figures, published on 19 December, also report that almost 20,000 people have been arrested.

Despite this crackdown, authorities have been unable to stamp out the protest movement that has been sweeping across the country for the past three months.

Sky News has mapped the location of every protest made up of 12 or more people since 16 September, with data provided by the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute with support from the Institute for the Study of War.

The dots are lighter or darker red depending on the conservative estimate of the number of people present, with grey dots indicating protests where it is not possible to determine the size of the crowd. The CTP say their dataset is “likely incomplete” given the difficulty to access information on the ground in Iran.

It is possible to see the first surges of demonstrations that began after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, who was killed while in detention for wearing her hijab (head covering) “improperly”.

It began mostly as a women’s rights movement but other voices quickly joined the call for a revolution. Issues such as freedom, democracy and economic stability have fuelled the determination of this army of ordinary people.

The animation shows how protests have been widespread, but with the Kurdish province and the capital Tehran consistently serving as hot spots for the movement.

Most protests have been between 12 and 1,000 people, with around a dozen being logged by the CTP as more than 1,000 individuals attending a single demonstration.

Ali Ansari, professor of Iranian history and director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews, told Sky News: “We are now seeing strikes and different types of protest taking place. The main thing to consider is that the government is finding it difficult to suppress them.”

He added that the executions of two protesters has “simply made the protesters more determined”.

‘Protesters leave phones at home to stay safe’

Videos and images taken by people on their smartphones have been one of the main sources of information coming out of Iran, with independent and foreign media effectively barred from reporting in the country.

But now, this vital information lifeline is at risk as the consequence of being found with protest footage is becoming insurmountable for some.

“People are being attacked for filming. They are further harassed if they are found with footage from protests when they are arrested,” explains Mahsa Alimardani, a researcher with information rights group Article 19 and the Oxford Internet Institute. Her work focuses on access to information online in Iran.

“People who go out on the streets now often don’t go out with their phones to eliminate that risk.”

Ms Alimardani says people are now becoming more cautious after seeing how others have been pursued and criminalised over footage, while others have been targeted or even shot at for holding up their phones at protests.

This and continuing draconian restrictions on internet access means Iranians face multiple layers of challenges when attempting to get evidence of the scale of the protests and the brutality of the crackdown out to the international community.

Authorities have aggressively attempted to limit the Iranian people’s ability to get online, with organisations such as internet monitors Netblocks and the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Institute of Technology reporting repeated outages.

For example, internet access across the country dropped during the execution of Majidreza Rahnavard on 11 December, as highlighted by the red stripe on the graph in this tweet.

The authorities are able to target specific areas of the country, as they appear to have done on 8 December when internet access dropped for around seven hours in the city of Sanandaj in the Kurdish region of the country.

“Really what we are seeing is really the tip of the iceberg. It’s stuff that is able to fall through the cracks of all these difficulties to get online and to document,” Ms Alimardani says.

For those prepared to take the risk, the footage coming out of Iran in recent weeks has changed. Ms Alimardani has noticed people are taking more steps than before to hide people’s identities while filming, such as just focusing on arms or legs and avoiding faces entirely, or filming in low light.

Footage showing violent clashes and aggressive behaviour from the security forces has become much more prevalent than in September and October. Evidence of injuries, including those sustained by people who have been shot, is also being widely shared.

“We’re still seeing a lot of footage of protests, in its diverse forms across Iran, from large crowds to balcony and rooftop chants,” she explains.

“But the content that speaks to the crimes and murders of the Islamic Republic is also there and is being documented by users. The tragedy is seeing this content increase as the regime takes on more violent or even genocidal strategies to put down the protests.”

As the footage coming out of Iran becomes more bloody and the protesters show little sign of stopping, what is next for the movement?

“It is probably too early to characterise this as a ‘revolution’,” Mr Ansari explains, “but people do see the movement as revolutionary.

“The direction of travel is clear.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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World

CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.

Warning this article shows images of a shooting

The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.

The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.

The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.

The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.

Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.

The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.

The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.

The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.

One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”

Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”

Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.

In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.

One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”

The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.

The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.

The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.

World

Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

A funeral was held for five Al Jazeera journalists who were targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday night, as the UN said the killings were a “grave breach of international law”.

Correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal, died after a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

The Israeli military defended the attack, claiming the most prominent of the group, Sharif, was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and only “posed as a journalist” – claims consistently denied by Sharif himself, Al Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

A sixth journalist – a freelancer called Mohammad al Khaldi – was also killed in the strike, medics at the Al Shifa Hospital told Reuters.

Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “targeted assassination” and described its employees as some of the “last remaining voices within Gaza”.

“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents… by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the broadcaster said.

“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities.

“The order to assassinate Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

The United Nations (UN) secretary-general condemned the killing of the five journalists and called for it to be investigated.

A spokesperson said in a media briefing: “These latest killings highlight the extreme risks that journalists continue to face when covering this ongoing conflict.

“The secretary-general calls for an independent, impartial investigation into these latest killings.”

He added that “at least” 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

The UN’s human rights office condemned the killings earlier on Monday, labelling the strike by Israel a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.

The war began on 7 October in 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli numbers.

Of the 50 hostages still in Gaza, Israeli authorities say 20 are still alive.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.

It comes as prominent journalists across media organisations continue to join calls for access to Gaza, which Israel has forbidden throughout the war.

On Sunday, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should let the UN Security Council into Gaza.

“Take journalists with you so that you can verify exactly what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

17 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.