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Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

iranintl.com

211–220 of 844 posts

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#211
post #54

The source (Iran International) is backed by Saudi money and has a bias to dunk on Iran. That said, I'm sure the death count numbers from the Rasht Massacre are staggeringly higher than the initial tallies of 2-5k.

It is a source run by expatriate Iranians of the diaspora.. the fact that so many people just discount their point of view it's pretty frustrating. If you speak to Iranians that you work with it's pretty illuminating

The number is probably in the middle. Diaspora Iranians are the most anti khomeini people out there

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “Iranians that you work with” in the west are highly self-selecting. They’re like Cubans in Florida or Vietnamese—people who fled in the aftermath of the revolution and are extremely antagonistic towards the regime. My family left Bangladesh the year after the dictator made Islam the official religion. My dad is apoplectic about the Islamist parties being unbanned recently after the government was overthrown. By…

[flagged]

Do you mean doesn’t wear a headscarf?

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#213

The source (Iran International) is backed by Saudi money and has a bias to dunk on Iran. That said, I'm sure the death count numbers from the Rasht Massacre are staggeringly higher than the initial tallies of 2-5k.

Actually, if anything, that makes it trustworthy because Saudi would like the regime to stay so that they can stay out of the oil markets and keep the prices high.

It’s Shia Sunni, it transgresses economics.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#215

The source is certainly unreliable, a quick scan of the wiki sources give you that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_International But does the number even matter? Whether its 4000 or 35000 the conduct has been unacceptable. The real question is the solution, is reporting like this designed to be used as the backdrop to foreign intervention? How many people will be killed then? "one death is a tragedy, a million is…

Why intervene? Iran was already struggling badly as a nation. Killing 2-30k civilians will not help improve a failing state.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#216
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s similar to how so many people dismiss Cuban American views on Cuba just because the cuban americans were mostly the ownership class that had to flee the revolution.

On the other hand, there is the opposing side that's also tough to ignore where they're coming from. Leftists, with Western pro-Khomeini protests, not just in Iran, with the usual involvement from the KGB, and the CIA opposing, brought Khomeini to power with claims that he would bring a communist revolution. As per tradition in a communist revolution, first thing he did once in power is execute communist allies. Of c…

I read the whole thing and you are smoking crack. They are calling for the overthrow of the Islamic regime and (explicitly) for the death of the supreme leader. As far as their theoretical argument goes, it's that the masses in IRan are ready to have a revolution but that they lack the organizational skills and roadmaps that communists beleieve themselves to have. They also argue that external support of a revolution is strategically bad because the incumbent regime will use it to portray the Iranian students/working class as tools of foriegn powers.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#217

How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

I would guess the actual numbers to be about 20-30% of this (which is still a lot). Consider the source.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population. Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct. But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much. What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence…

>I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population. Who holds this opinion? >But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much. All of humanity cares less about when a government uses violence against its citizens than wars? How can you possibly make this generalization when ea…

He doesn’t need a list of people he can quote for his observation to be true.

And it’s not far fetched either: With a state‘s power structure ultimately resting upon (enough) support from society, there is an implicit legitimacy assumed in their actions.

The same can not be said about mass executions of citizens by an invading foreign power structure. Which is why you see the typical propaganda rush to make the victims look like perpetrators.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#219
post #64

How is this possible without explosives? Even with vehicle mounted machine guns it seems like a crazy high number. Did the protestors get boxed in somehow? And across so many locations, that seems to require a crazy amount of coordination to kill so many in so little time.

The coordination is the thing here, that's many units being instructed to carry through in the same manner. As for the numbers: Interior Ministry reports say security forces confronted demonstrators in more than 400 cities and towns, with more than 4,000 clash locations reported nationwide it's on the order of 100 deaths at each of 400 locations (clearly not uniformly distributed, some locations would have had many m…

Exactly. These numbers don’t seem that impossible if one considers that the state‘s force rests upon (enough) ideological support within society. Given that, the distribution of regime supporters will be rather even across the country, and therefore sending in death squads wont mean bussing them in from Teheran but rather sourcing them locally.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#220
post #22

For comparison, estimates of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre death count are usually put in the 300-1,000 range by journalists and human rights groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

But note that the Tianenmen Square massacre was only one part of a larger nationwide protest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Chinese_protests_by_regio... . There's no telling how many were killed or disappeared outside of Beijing.

Actually, there is plenty of telling, and the largest (only?) massacre outside Beijing was in Chengdu, with 8 to 400 people killed depending on who you believe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_protests_of_1989

There was plenty of rounding up student leaders and executions afterwards, but I don't think even the wildest anti-communists would claim a death toll in the thousands for this.

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