Sevda Abdavinejad couldn’t contact her family back in Iran.
Not by the internet, mobile or landline.
After two weeks of silence, Abdavinejad’s family was able to talk to her through landlines for a few minutes at a time.
“I didn’t know if they were safe,” Abdavinejad — a doctoral student in evolution, ecology and behavior — said.
Milad Hatamlee, unable to contact his family for more than 10 days, couldn’t ask them anything more than how they were doing when he got them on the phone. The calls were being listened to by the Iranian government, Hatamlee said.
“We couldn’t communicate easily, and it wasn’t safe,” said Hatamlee, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.
What Abdavinejad and Hatamlee faced was a forced internet shutdown in late January by the Iranian government amidst its violent crackdown on widespread anti-government protests.
The blackout has prevented accurate counts of the deaths that were done by Iranian security forces. So far, the Human Rights Activists News Agency — a nongovernmental organization that focuses on human rights issues in Iran — puts the death toll to be at least 7,005 with more than 17,000 under investigation, while doctors outside Iran estimate it to be at least 33,000.
All of Abdavinejad’s friends that went to the protests are traumatized.
“Everyone had seen dead people,” Abdavinejad said. “My friend was at a protest and said, ‘I just saw three people laying down. I thought that I can help them; when I tried to move them, there was blood everywhere. I couldn’t stay to help them because they were shooting nonstop.’”
Hatamlee said that his friends told them that there were bodies in every alley.
“It was like we were living in an apocalypse,” Hatamlee said. “You go outside. You see bodies everywhere.”
Her friends won’t stop asking for freedom, Abdavinejad says.
“They were saying, ‘I know that I’m going to die, but I would love to see the regime people dying as well,'" Abdavinejad said.
These horrors aren’t being talked about enough, with Iranians risking their lives to call more attention to what’s going on.
Because of her speaking out, Abdavinejad can’t go back to Iran as long as the regime is still standing. She hasn’t seen her family for more than three years.
“For what I believe, what I express here right now, they might go call my family and say, ‘Okay, your daughter is doing x and y in the United States so we might arrest you as well,’” Abdavinejad said. “I’m taking that risk because I feel like the world should know this truth.”
K.B., who requested to use only his initials due to worry about retribution against his family in Iran, says that Iranians across the world are advocating for the world to understand why the Islamic government should not be allowed to continue.
“All of this has got to stop at some point,” he said. “If it is allowed to continue, there will just be more horror.”
What Iranians need is help, Abdavinejad says.
“We Iranian people, we’re right now desperate,” Abdavinejad said. “We cannot fight these devils, these murderers, barehanded in Iran because they have no limits.”
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @my_my_my_myliennnn on Instagram.
