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 Shahin Milan, a young worker in the city of Khoy in West Azerbaijan province who was returning from work on the night of November 19, 2022, when he was suddenly shot with the pellet guns of two security agents standing on the sidewalk. His head was hit with at least 40 pellets, one in his left eye, and since that time he has been receiving treatment for that eye.
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Shahin is the fourth of five siblings. His father drives a taxi and Shahin himself is drywaller. He does not have much capital or the connections to achieve any childhood dreams. As a child, he wished to be prosperous enough to live like children in Iran’s capital city of Tehran.
He was in seventh grade when he dropped out of school and started working. He started by making furniture but later took any work he could find, from farming to drywalling. Shahin has also left his native region of Iranian Azerbaijan.
He is now back to work, even though he has lost an eye and his head is still filled with pellets. He spends his leisure time as he did before. On Fridays, if his friends have time and can arrange a car, they drive around the city and have a meal somewhere and, the next day, it is back to the routine. He works from 8am to 6pm, without any savings or prospects. Before he started his mandatory military service, he worked for his father and he is doing the same thing now.
The Third Shot
On November 19 of last year, nationwide protests had started two months earlier and it was also the anniversary of the bloody crackdown of the November 2019 protests. In Shahin’s native city of Khoy, people had taken to the streets and chanted “Freedom, freedom, freedom”.
تصاویری از اعتراضات شامگاه ۲۸ آبان در خوی به دست بیبیسی فارسی رسیده است که نشان میدهد معترضان به خیابان برآمده و شعار «آزادی» سرمیدهند. pic.twitter.com/wVhzQZwyOZ
— BBC NEWS فارسی (@bbcpersian) November 19, 2022
Security agents arrived and started chasing and attacking the protesters.
🔴خوی
— صدای شهریور (@SedayeShahrivar) November 19, 2022
۲۸ آبان ۱۴۰۱
درگیری خیابانی در #خوی.#مهسا_امینی#آبان_ادامه_دارد pic.twitter.com/GjoOaxKSCe
Shahin was returning from work and joined the crowd. The security agents had not yet opened fire. But suddenly, two security agents in black uniforms standing on the sidewalk pulled out their guns and started shooting. They fired once and then fired for a second time. Shahin was trying to take shelter when he heard a third shot and fell to the ground.
What Shahin heard sounded like the collision of two iron beams. But he was still conscious enough to recognize that, if he stayed where he was, he might be arrested. Shahin’s left eye had been struck, and he could not open it, but he was able to get up and dragged himself to a safe alley before collapsing again. He survived the protest; less because he was afraid of death, more because he was afraid of arrest.
Shahin's right eye, which was uninjured, was also closed as he struggled against the pain. He was hit with pellets from his shoulders to his head. There are pellets in his eyebrow, on his nose and around it. The area around the right eye was uninjured but a pellet tore through his left eyeball.
Hope and Despair
When Shahin was lying on the ground, an unknown woman helped him away from the location. He was bleeding so badly that the cab driver feared it would ruin the taxi’s backseat. Shahin disembarked the taxi midway during the ride. The pellets had also torn inside Shahin’s mouth.
Shahin was able to call friends, who took him to a private clinic, where they cleaned his face and removed 20 pellets that had not penetrated so deeply; but it was still unclear how many pellets had entered his body.
On November 20, Shahin received surgery in a hospital in Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan. A doctor told his family that his left eye must removed. But they did not agree, so they only stopped the bleeding.
A second doctor agreed to perform a second surgery to remove the pellet that had penetrated his eyeball. The operation was performed a week later. The vision in his left eye was slowly improving, and Shahin could distinguish between light and dark, but then the doctors said a third operation was necessary to remove a membrane that was growing inside his eye. Without the removal, he was told, he would go blind.
Shahin had his third surgery just recently, after six months.
Rouzbeh Esfandiari, a former doctor with Tehran Emergency Services and IranWire’s medical consultant, says: “Whenever a foreign object injures a body part, a scar forms where the injury has occurred, but the tissue that is formed is completely different from the original tissue. When the damaged part is unable to repair itself, cells such as fibroblasts form connective tissues, but these tissues are different and can grow so big that they would pressure on the eyeball.”
Even the process of removing the overgrown membrane is hazardous. “To remove the scar, they must manipulate the underlying nervous layer and this can cause the retina to detach,” says Dr. Esfandiari. “In other words, by removing the scar can damage the retina, even if the retina is healthy and this can result in blindness or degradation of the eyesight.”
Since the night of November 19, Shahin has been after treating his left eye, a heavy load on the shoulders of a young who has worked since he was a teenager and still has to work even with pellets in his head and an eye that might or might not regain some of its sight.
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