Washington Examiner | Kaylee McGhee | January 12, 2020
The numbers were horrifying: Anywhere from 400 to more than 1,500 dead and thousands more imprisoned at the hands of the Iranian government. Gunned down from helicopters and rooftops, the bodies of the dead were confiscated by the regime, and the families of the murdered were warned not to hold funerals.
This was the cost of the Iranian people’s protests against the regime last November. And yet, thousands more are marching against Iran and its supreme leader this weekend, demanding freedom and honesty from an authoritarian regime that offers neither.
This new round of protests was inspired by the Iranian government’s admission that it had “unintentionally” shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, killing every single passenger on board, many of whom were Iranian citizens. Iran did not offer a true apology — instead, top officials gave an excuse, arguing that if President Trump had not escalated tensions within the region, the “human error” would never have occurred, and 176 people would still be alive.
This, after days of lies and an attempt to cover the whole thing up by destroying evidence on the ground, rightly incensed a people still hurting from the regime’s violence in November.
“We don’t want Islamic Republic!” chanted students at Iran’s Beheshti University in Tehran.