She also debunks some recent myths spread on social media.
Three months after the tragic death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the revolutionary protests that have erupted in Iran — led primarily by women and young people — show no signs of stopping. To get an update on what’s going on, we spoke to New York Times journalist Farnaz Fassihi, who has been covering Iran for more than 25 years.
KCM: Farnaz, walk us through the reporting you’ve been doing on Iran over the past few months…..
FF: The uprising in Iran has now entered its third month and shows no signs of quieting down, despite the government’s attempts to contain it with violent crackdowns. Most of my reporting has been focused on trying to get the scope of the protests — what the people are demanding and also document the vast human rights violations that the government and its security forces are unleashing.
I recently did a story investigating how the government was systematically cracking down on children and teenagers. My reporting revealed that Iran had killed about 50 children, and had systematically arrested and targeted high schools in about 25 raids in different high schools across Iran, where students were beaten; in one incident, a young 16-year-old girl was killed from the beating. In other places, students were expelled from school, their bags were searched, and they were threatened and intimidated. So we’re seeing a sort of systematic targeting of minors because these protests are led by young people. They’re led by women as we’ve seen, but also the average age of the protestors is somewhere between 16 to 22.
How are you reporting on these stories when access to information and sources is so hard to come by in Iran these days?
I have been exiled, so I haven’t been able to go back and report inside Iran since 2009 — but I’ve covered Iran for more than 25 years because I have a network of sources, I speak Farsi, and I understand and know the story really well. I tap into those resources and sources and try to cover it from afar. Because the Iranian government has disrupted internet service and tried to block the flow of information outside and inside of Iran, reaching people is very difficult and reporting takes an extraordinary amount of time. We have to actually do our own reporting, find witnesses, find families of victims, and interview people on the ground. That kind of reporting takes time, but it’s very important because once we nail it down and we have it documented, then it’s factual, important, in-depth reporting of the situation inside.
Tell us more about your experience reporting on Iran over the years.
The Iranian government targets journalists, and the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists says about 62 reporters have been arrested just in the past two months, including the two women reporters who brought the story of Mahsa Amini to light. They’ve both been arrested and charged with conspiring to create chaos and endanger national security. So reporting is dangerous business in Iran. You know, doing truthful reporting, accountability reporting, is something that the Iranian government does not like and sees as a threat. And that includes both reporters who are inside Iran, or dual-national reporters like me who still cover Iran.
I used to cover Iran regularly when I was based in the Middle East, in Beirut, and I would go to Iran a couple of times a year to report. But after the 2009 protests around the contested election, the Iranian government started targeting dual national journalists and particularly Iranian Americans. There were specific threats against me, so, unfortunately, I haven’t been able to go back, not only to report but also to see my relatives in Iran.
There’s been a lot of confusion and misinformation about what’s happening in Iran — there was a story reporting that Iran had sentenced 15,000 protestors to death. Could you explain to us what’s actually happening?
The challenge of covering Iran when you’re not in Iran is to have the context to be able to dispel disinformation from facts. The United Nations said that 14,000 people have been arrested in Iran during the past two months. Of those 14,000 people, the government is starting to have trials and charge them with different crimes. So far, I believe two or three people have been convicted of the charge of being “enemies of God,” which carries the death penalty.
There was a news story about how the majority of Iranian lawmakers called for protestors who have been arrested to be executed. They actually gathered at the Parliament and called for the execution — but the Parliament calling for the execution doesn’t necessarily mean that the judiciary is going to sentence all the protestors with the execution charge, and I think that’s where the confusion came.
The idea that there are 14,000 people arrested and parliamentarians are calling for their execution led to some erroneous reporting that Iran was sentencing 14,000 people to death. This doesn’t take away from the very serious concern that human rights activists and lawyers have that people in Iran may face execution — and even one person facing execution for protesting is too many, right? So we don’t want to take away from the seriousness of these charges or from the fact that there needs to be attention on this. But it’s also really important to do diligent reporting and make sure that the facts are clear.
[Editor’s note: Since our conversation with Fassihi took place, the situation has become more dire. As of Jan. 10, 2023, Iran has sentenced 13 people to death, and four of them have already been executed.]
Recently, there was a story published in the New York Times about the morality police in Iran being abolished that caused a lot of uproar online. [For more context, look at the comments on the NYT’s tweet of the article .]
We weren’t the first or only news outlet to report on this development, and our story was careful to present the uncertainty surrounding the attorney general’s remarks. We’re always careful when we’re reporting on public statements from this government. Given how opaque it is, and its history of misdirection, everything it says needs to be regarded with skepticism and challenged with context and reporting. But sometimes that skepticism, context, and reporting can be lost on social media, and sometimes people don’t want us to cover what Iranian officials say at all.
It’s an intense situation, and people feel strongly about it. It’s natural that not everyone is going to like every story we write. But I think our reporting on the morality police holds up — senior officials say it is being disbanded, and its officers haven’t been seen on the streets lately. Whether this will make any difference is unclear. The protesters are demanding much more, and the government has leaned into using its other security forces for repression. All of this context was reported in our story.
You’ve interviewed many human rights lawyers and activists during your reporting on Iran — what are you hearing from them?
When I talk to human rights lawyers or activists on the ground, and when I talk to families of children who’ve been targeted, parents say they have this anxiety — Our school may get raided today. I spoke to a mom in the city of Shiraz, whose daughter’s school was raided by the Basij militia. They expelled 16 students and searched their phones and their books.
Another relative told me that his nephew was threatened at school and was showing visible signs of trauma at home after the raid. I spoke to a lawyer who represented a 14-year-old girl who was arrested while protesting, and her family couldn’t locate her for a week. After they located her, they found her in a detention facility with adult drug dealers.
And we’re hearing very disturbing accounts of kids placed in detention facilities who are subjected to forced behavioral therapy. They are brainwashed into thinking that they’ve committed religious sins by coming out and protesting and saying, “We want agency over our bodies, we don’t wanna wear a scarf, we don’t wanna wear the hijab.” They’re told that they have to admit they made a mistake. And more disturbingly, some of the children who refused or challenged them were forced into taking medication. So you can understand what kind of anxiety parents have right now. One mom in Tehran told me, “My daughters are not safe on the streets, and they’re not safe in school.” Schools are supposed to be a sanctuary, right? You send your kids to school and you don’t expect them to get tear-gassed or have the school be raided or have your child be arrested, or even killed, as in one incident. So, you know, the level of collective trauma is very disconcerting in Iran.
In addition to the threats from the Iranian government, many women journalists, including myself, also face campaigns of online harassment and threats from some of Iran’s opposition members. As reporters, we accept and understand that criticism and disagreement are part of a free press, but these intimidation and harassment campaigns are a tactic to intimidate us into silence. But we try to do the work that we do despite the threats and the online harassment because what really is important is, is trying to get the story from inside Iran.
For the Times, you also cover the United Nations, which has been debating how to handle the situation in Iran — can you give us an update on what’s happening?
At the United Nations, there have been calls to hold Iran accountable for some of the violations of human rights and violations against women and children that have been happening. UNICEF put out a statement saying they’re very concerned about kids getting detained or killed.
The UN Human Rights Council voted to create an independent investigation committee, which is tasked with documenting and investigating Iran’s violation of human rights during these protests. This is very important because it builds international pressure on Iran, and sends the message to the Iranian government that the world is watching.
What’s so different about this moment in Iran’s history?
Courageous Iranian women are having their global moment right now. There’s a lot of attention on their plight, their struggles, and on their bravery to fight for their rights. But this is a very long struggle. The women’s rights movement in Iran is a century old, and particularly over the past 43 years, women’s rights activists and groups have been doing diligent grassroots work in Iran, fighting for basic rights. Women have been pushing the boundaries an inch at a time with the hemline of their clothes, or with a single hair strand. I think that it’s important to acknowledge how long this has been going on and how grassroots it is.
People are organizing within neighborhoods, and they’re organizing within cities themselves. And what’s important is to observe how this is going to move forward: Whether they’re going to keep taking to the streets, whether this is going to spread into more of an organized effort, or whether a leader [of the movement] is going to emerge from inside Iran. There have been some strikes at different sectors, some truckers have gone on strike, and bazaars have gone on strike. If these strikes are more organized, that could also have an impact on the economic cycle of the Iranian government. So it’s really unpredictable where it’s gonna go, but what we’ve seen is that it’s a new era. The people want change and they’re not intimidated by violence.
