In Tehran, a mother searching for her daughter opened body bag after body bag in an overflowing morgue, trying to find her child’s face. No parent should have to do this.
The Iranian regime’s shutdown of the internet and telecommunication services in January 2026 amid unprecedented massacres left survivors cut off from the outside world. Although UN bodies and major human rights organizations have identified patterns suggesting crimes against humanity, the international community has been slow to respond.
A blackout by design
Severe economic hardship and currency collapse spurred protests against the Iranian government beginning on December 28, 2025, and these subsequently escalated into a country-wide general call for freedom. On January 8, 2026, authorities imposed an internet and telecommunication services blackout as repression escalated. UN experts said national connectivity flatlined at around 1% of normal activity. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran said credible information indicated that a top national security council ordered security forces to wage a “decisive” crackdown, and it urged immediate restoration of connectivity and the release of those arbitrarily detained.
Some limited-access circuits later resurfaced, but overall connectivity remained shut down for weeks, keeping reporting limited. This pattern has precedent. In November 2019, authorities imposed a near-total shutdown during protests, and Amnesty International later documented and verified hundreds of deaths that occurred as the country went dark. In 2026, it documented security forces firing rifles and pellet shotguns from streets and rooftops, often targeting victims’ heads and chests. Both shutdowns hid the true scale of unlawful killings. A blackout’s most lethal effect is delay, allowing time for mass killings, mass arrests, and destruction of evidence.
Shutdowns of this nature are force multipliers, hiding violence and distorting reality. They prevent the timely delivery of aid and turn hospitals into death traps. Recently, UN experts have reported raids on hospitals, the use of tear gas in medical facilities, and efforts to arrest wounded protesters. A UN expert told Reuters that she had been informed that security forces removed wounded protesters from hospitals and detained them. Blackouts also undermine accountability by buying authorities time to destroy evidence. Amnesty International reported that crucial evidence, including videos and photographs recorded on mobile phones, was lost when security forces confiscated devices from those unlawfully killed or arbitrarily detained. Access Now has shown that serious abuses usually accompany shutdowns worldwide, and they may impede humanitarian assistance and human rights documentation. The UN Fact-Finding Mission emphasized the urgency of evidence preservation in Iran and stressed that “state structures enabling the violence” must be identified for future proceedings.
In the long term, shutdowns export the workload of truth-telling to diaspora journalists and translators who must reconstruct events from fragments—voice notes, partial videos, medical records—slowly, at a distance, and in multiple languages. This all buys perpetrators time and helps them escape accountability.
The numbers we can verify, and what the blackout hides
The Iranian regime provided an official number of deaths during the protests, but others have defied threats from the government to tally names city by city. Reuters, citing the confirmed toll from the Human Rights News Agency (HRANA), admitted it could not verify these numbers because of the blackout and the dangers of attempting such a verification. This is all by design—it is uncertainty manufactured by the state.
Human Rights Watch warned that the blackout has “severely hampered” its ability to verify reports of large-scale violence and killings pouring in from hospitals and morgues. Amnesty described a coordinated crackdown intended to conceal massacres of protesters, mass arrests, enforced disappearances, threats of torture, and intimidation of grieving families. The blackout has facilitated the destruction of evidence and the silencing of witnesses related to all these activities.
Some reporting has gone further. Iran International’s analysis of classified documents and field reports indicates more than 36,500 deaths, and its report documents “finishing shots” fired at injured patients in hospitals. These remain difficult to confirm independently. The difference between what can be credibly alleged and what can be confirmed in a repressive environment is not a technical issue; it is a function of the violence. If a regime can kill en masse, cover up the evidence, and make people “unfindable” in detention, reported numbers are more than statistics. The gulf between allegations, partial documentation, and independently verified deaths reflects the conditions of repression: censorship, shutdowns, intimidation of families and witnesses, restricted access to hospitals and detention sites, and the concealment of bodies or records. Thus, uncertainty around the numbers is not incidental; it is one of the effects of state violence.
Why this may amount to crimes against humanity and what must happen next
The UN Fact-Finding Mission concluded in 2024 that many violations committed by the Iranian regime during the 2022 protests amounted to crimes against humanity—a conclusion shared by many experts. Government forces deployed organized lethal force, mass detention, and cover-ups against civilians and even children during 2022’s nationwide protest movement. UN investigators pointed out that such attacks were widespread and systematic. At the same time, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented patterns of summary killings, enforced disappearances, torture threats, and other crimes committed in the cover of the 2022 shutdown. Taken together, the evidence shows that the Iranian regime has already committed crimes against humanity and is likely to continue. Without urgent action to protect detainees, prevent executions, and preserve evidence, the same machinery will continue to claim more lives.
The world cannot do anything about the deaths that have already taken place, but it can still help prevent further loss of life. Thousands are still held in detention or have been forcibly disappeared, and many face real threats of torture, forced confessions, and execution following sham trials. Yet the international community’s reaction looks much like business as usual: expressions of concern and condemnation, followed by weak leverage and dwindling attention.
This crisis presents a serious challenge to the human rights system. Can existing human rights mechanisms check an autocratic regime that has repeatedly employed the same toolkit of mass violence, information control, and denial, or are they simply useful for documentation after the fact? If the human rights of Iranians are to be considered a serious priority, the international community must take decisive action: find missing detainees, halt incommunicado detention, ensure access to counsel and family, facilitate independent monitoring, prevent further executions, and hold perpetrators accountable.
Anything less will tell the regime that its information blackout is working.