Iran’s Blackout: How Silence Helps Hide Mass Death

Kevin Abbaszadeh
Technology Editor

 

When Iran shut the internet off, it wasn’t about “security”, it was about silence.

In the middle of massive protests, the government of Iran flipped the switch and cut millions of people off from the outside world. Phones stopped working, social media went dark, and messages/videos to the rest of the world wouldn’t send. And while the rest of the world saw and heard nothing, something horrific was happening inside the country.

According to reports from activists, families and news groups outside of Iran, over 30,000 civilian protesters were killed by the Iranian government in the past month. Thirty thousand plus lives, and no global outcry. Why? Because there was no internet to

carry the truth out.

In today’s world, if there’s no livestreams, no constant updates, it’s easier for governments to pretend nothing is happening. Full internet shutdowns like this are not random, they are timed. They happen when protests peak, and when evidence would normally spread faster than governments can lie.

By cutting the internet, the government stopped people from organizing, and stopped people from bearing witness. Protesters had a difficult time documenting what they saw, families couldn’t tell the world their children were gone, and journalists couldn’t share death counts. Hospitals couldn’t communicate, and the story was frozen before it could even spread.

Officials can say numbers are exaggerated. They can blame foreign misinformation, and they can delay investigations until attention fades. By the time the truth leaks out through VPN’s, satellite connections, and Iranian’s living abroad, the moment has passed. Accountability disappears.

For the people inside Iran, this wasn’t new, or abstract. Parents searched for missing sons and daughters with no way to ask for help. Entire cities were isolated while deadly force was used against civilians. The blackout does not protect the Iranian people, it traps them.

This is why global access to the internet matters. Not for convenience or entertainment, but because without it, governments can kill quietly. Iran’s blackout shows a terrifying truth: in the modern world, you don’t need secrecy to commit atrocities… You just need silence. A

And silence, when engineered this way, is part of the crime.

 

 

Contact Kevin at kevin.abbaszadeh@student.shu.edu