Blinding as a Weapon (34): A Young Mother’s “Badge of Honor”

As IranWire has reported, hundreds of Iranians have sustained severe eye injuries after being hit by pellets, tear gas canisters, paintball bullets or other projectiles used by security forces amid a bloody crackdown on mainly peaceful demonstrations. Doctors say that, as of now, at least 580 protesters have lost one or both eyes in Tehran and in Kurdistan alone. But the actual numbers across the country are much higher. The report concluded that such actions by the security forces could constitute a “crime against humanity,” as defined by Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

IranWire has explored this question more deeply in an interview with Professor Payam Akhavan, a prominent human rights lawyer, special advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and a former member of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

IranWire is aware of more than 50 serious eye injuries sustained by protestors and bystanders over the past five months. With the help of independent ophthalmologists, we have reviewed the medical records of around a dozen individuals and compiled a comprehensive medical report.

In the series of reports “Blinding as a Weapon,” IranWire presents the victims’ stories told in their own words. Some have posted their stories, along with their names and pictures, on social media. Others, whose real names shall not be disclosed to protect their safety, have told their stories to IranWire, which can make their identities and medical records available to international legal authorities and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is the story of Mersedeh Shahinkar, who was shot in the eye during protests in October 2022. The fitness instructor and mother of a 10-year-old girl decided to leave Iran last month after security forces raided their home. 

In one of her Instagram stories, she called the injury to her eye, which has lost 90 percent of its sight, a “badge of honor.”

“They hanged some people by the neck. They hanged us by the eye,” she also wrote, in reference to the hundreds of people executed every year in Iran.

On October 15, 2022, Shahinkar and her mother joined other protesters in Tehran’s Sattar Khan Street and chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic. It was 7:30 p.m. when security forces, on foot and riding motorcycles, attacked the crowd. 

After the young woman shouted, “Don’t fire, it’s my mother!” an agent shot her in the eye with a paintball gun. Her mother, who was shot in the leg a week earlier, was still taking antibiotics and painkillers.

Months later, Shahinkar wrote her story on Instagram: “I could not believe it. I put my hand over my eye and blood was spilling through my fingers. I still can feel the heat and the smell of my blood. My mother almost had a heart attack when she looked at me. She was beating herself and shouting, ‘My daughter has been blinded, help!’”

Three Surgeries for a Shrunken Eye

Shahinkar was taken to a clinic where a doctor washed her eye and injected her with a painkiller. Then she was taken to an eye hospital and spent 14 hours in a bed, during which her eye continued to bleed. The optical nerve and part of the retina in the injured eye had been destroyed by the pellet.

The first surgery was performed the next morning. The doctors stitched her eye’s cornea and iris before discharging her. In the second surgery, silicone oil was injected behind the retina. In the third surgery on February 16, doctors replaced the silicone oil with a new injection. The iris in the eye was losing its color, so the doctors replaced the lens with an artificial one to keep the eye’s appearance normal. 

Eight months later, the injured eye lost most of its vision and looks smaller. If Shahinkar brings an object as close as her nose, the eye might discern the color of the object. That’s it.

The pressure in the eye continuously fluctuates and sometimes becomes painful. 

“The drop in the eye pressure can cause the person to see broken-up or skewed images,” Dr. Rouzbeh Esfandiari, a former doctor with Tehran Emergency Services, tells IranWire. “When the eye is traumatized with the impact of things like a fist, a pellet or a paintball, it can disconnect the eyeball or parts of the eye such as the nerve layer or the retina, and it can rupture the

muscles in the eyelid. This, in turn, reduces the liquid inside the eye and causes a pressure drop.”

Leaving Iran after Raid by Security Forces

As Shahinkar’s treatment continued, she communicated through Instagram with other protesters like her who had been injured in the eyes and posted stories about her own condition. 

But she cut off her communications with everybody on January 14, when security agents raided her home and confiscated her mobile phone, her diary and other personal belongings. Her husband and daughter were at home during the raid. 

Shahinkar lived in hiding in various places for more than a month. For many days, plainclothesmen on motorcycles watched her home. Finally, on March 11, she left Iran and re-started her campaign on social media.

That’s the first question Shahinkar’s daughter asked her when she was told the truth about her mother’s injury. 

It took the girl several months to come to terms with the conditions of her mother, take her

hand and accompany her. She had gone through various stages from denial and anger to taking pride in a mother who had lost an eye for freedom.