When anti-regime demonstrations swept across Iran last month, the country’s security forces responded by opening fire and then pursued the wounded in hospitals and clinics.
Soon after the start of the protests, we began receiving messages from an underground network of doctors and nurses in the country — most sent through encrypted messaging apps to evade the regime’s surveillance apparatus. Medical professionals described hospital floors slick with blood, teenagers with severe pellet and gunshot wounds, and bodies rushed in from nearby streets. The crackdown extended to medical staff members. Physicians and nurses who treated protesters were threatened for providing care, and dozens of them have been detained. Many are still being held without charges. Amid the chaos, some medical workers quietly began preserving evidence of the massacre and its aftermath — X-rays, scans, photographs and patient records that they say contradict official accounts of the unrest. Providing care became an act of courage and defiance.
For the video above, New York Times Opinion verified these images by interviewing several doctors who treated injured protesters. They spoke on the condition of anonymity, given the safety risks. We also confirmed when and where the X-rays were taken and consulted trauma surgeons to assess and authenticate the patterns of injury.
Many of the images and descriptions are graphic in nature. But they offer a rare window into the extraordinary risks Iranian doctors and nurses took to save lives and to preserve evidence of the government’s violence.
You can read their full eyewitness reports here.
Fatemeh Jamalpour and Roxana Saberi are journalists reporting on Iran. Francesca Trianni is a producer with Opinion Video. James Robinson is an editor with Opinion Video.
Opinion Video combines original reporting with creative storytelling to produce visually transformative commentary. Pitch a video guest essay here.
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