Internet blackout in Iran amid an escalation in anti-government unrest
by Paul Godfrey · UPIJan. 9 (UPI) -- Iran was under a total Internet blackout amid a crackdown on escalating unrest over economic conditions that has resulted in dozens of demonstrators, including children, being killed since the protests erupted almost two weeks ago.
The outage Thursday night, effectively cutting people off from information, each other and the outside world, came as the protests spread to all of Iran's 31 provinces, but it was unclear if the blackout was due to the country's theocratic regime pulling the plug as they have in previous civil unrest.
Internet freedom watchdog NetBlocks, which reported the outage followed blackouts in the western city of Kermanshah earlier in the day, said the country was still offline at 8 a.m. local time.
"Iran has now been offline for 12 hours, with national connectivity flatlining at around 1% of ordinary levels," the group said.
Diaspora Iranians online have said they were unable to contact relatives by any means, including landline telephone.
In the run-up to the blackout, shop keepers in Kurdish regions and cities across Iran closed their stores after Kurdish political groups called a general strike on Thursday.
Video circulating online from the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed closed shops in the provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan in the west of the country. The group alleged authorities had injured an unspecified number of protestors after opening fire in Kermanshah and the town of Kamyaran to the north.
Large protests were also reported in Tehran, the western city of Abadan and the Lars province in the south.
The developments came as Iran Human Rights said Thursday that the number of protesters killed by Iranian security forces had risen to 45, including eight children, with hundreds more injured and more than 2,000 detained since the demonstrations began Dec. 28.
The Norway-based group said IHR said it had confirmation that 13 protesters had been killed on Wednesday alone, making it the deadliest single day of the uprising.
"The evidence shows that the scope of the crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day," said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
The BBC, which has a Persian service, said it had reviewed and verified footage of a protest in Zahedan, in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province, in which participants were heard chanting "death to the dictator."
Security forces fired tear gas and so-called "pellet bullets," according to The Halvash, a website that documents human rights in the Sistan-Baluchestan region.
Zahedan was the scene of the deadliest day of national protests in September 2022, sparked by the death in police custody of women's rights activist Mahsa Amini, when at least 60 people were killed, many of them when security forces opened fire from inside a police station.
Britain said it backed "those who exercise their right to peaceful protest" and demanded the Iranian government show restraint.
"The Iranian authorities must exercise restraint and respect fundamental freedoms, including freedoms of expression, assembly and access to information," said a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Downing Street declined to say if it backed U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to intervene to protect demonstrators if the regime killed people protesting peacefully, saying its "focus is supporting those who are exercising their right to peaceful protest."
Trump warned last week that the United States was "locked and loaded and ready to go."
"If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue," he said.
He did not elaborate on what form any intervention might take.
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