‘Iran shot my son dead in his hospital bed’
Sam Afshari was barely 17 when he joined the protests that led to tens of thousands of murders. His father fears demonstrators’ sacrifices are being forgotten
n the shelf behind Parvis Afshari are photographs of a beaming teenage boy with medals — a champion swimmer.
“That’s my son Sam,” he says proudly. “He was the national champion. He was studying IT. He loved to laugh and joke. He’d just turned 17 and was my only child …” Then his voice starts to falter.
On January 8, two weeks after his 17th birthday, Sam went out into the streets of their home city of Karaj, west of Tehran, with friends to protest against the Islamic regime, like millions of people in towns across Iran.
It was his first time protesting. Like tens of thousands of others, he never came home.
“When he told me he was going, I asked him to stay among the crowds,” said Afshari, who lives in exile in Germany and works as a lifeguard in a swimming complex. “His aunt and uncle — my brother and sister-in-law — were also there.”
Then the internet was cut off and the shooting started.
Security forces came out on pick-ups mounted with Dushkas, Russian machineguns, and began firing on protesters. “My brother told me people were just falling over each other and dropping,” Afshari said. “Sam was shot in the side.”
Dragged into a car park of an apartment block by residents for protection, Sam was among many injured taken to Madani hospital. But while he was waiting for surgery, attached to a breathing tube, security forces entered the hospital, as doctors have described in many places, and according to Afshari, “finished him off”.
“They shot him in the back of the head so the bullet exited through his cheek. A nurse who witnessed it told me. She said she saw multiple people killed inside the hospital.”
His two friends Nima and Rohan, with whom he had gone to protest, were also killed.“They all had lots of dreams,” Afshari said. “Sam was a genius. He spoke four languages — English, French and German as well as Persian. He wanted to go to university to study computer engineering. They could have built Iran. They were youth who just wanted freedom.”
‘I don’t understand why Europe is silent’
It is still unknown just how many people were killed in those two days of massacre. A total internet shutdown, which has mostly continued, stopped people getting their stories out and many families never received the bodies of their loved ones.
The regime admitted to 3,000 dead, but human rights groups say more than 30,000 — more than ten times the number of those killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Afshani says it was 50,000.
Now he worries that their sacrifice is being forgotten amid all the controversy over Donald Trump’s war on Iran. “I don’t understand why Europe is so silent about what happened,” he said.
Afshari supports the US attack on Iran, rejoicing in the killing of Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, on the first day. He rejects arguments that it has been a failure that has only ended up strengthening the most hardline elements of the regime, and sending fuel prices soaring worldwide by blocking the Strait of Hormuz.Negotiations continue. American officials say they are waiting for a response from Iran to a peace proposal. Officials in Pakistan, which has been mediating, claim they are close to a truce. But recent days have seen exchanges of fire in the Strait of Hormuz, for which both sides blame each other, prompting fears that the fragile month-long ceasefire could fall apart.
“They trifled with us today,” Trump said on Friday. “We blew ’em away … If there’s no ceasefire, you’re not going to have to know. You’re just gonna have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran.”
For Afshari, however, his fear is that the US will end the war. “Trump must not make peace,” he said. “Look at what kind of people these are. If they killed 50,000 of their own people in two nights, they won’t have mercy on anyone.”
He points out that the regime is carrying out near-daily executions of those arrested in the protests, according to human rights groups. At least 28 men have been executed since March 18, according to Iran state media, of which half were in the past two weeks.
Many families learn of executions only after they have been carried out, with some facing intimidation and pressure not to speak publicly, while regime forces are refusing to hand over the bodies of the dead.
‘She cried so much she ended up in hospital’
The concern that the fate of the January protesters is being forgotten is shared by Mojgan Taldiwari mother of Arya Alidoust, 26, an estate agent, who was also killed that night, shot dead in the streets of his hometown Lahijan in western Iran.
“He called and told me he was going with his friends to protest,” she said. “I begged him not to but he said ‘it’s not OK what they [the regime] are doing. Why should I let my friends down?”
Taldiwari moved with her husband and two younger children to Germany in 2019 because they are Christians and feared persecution, but said her son insisted on staying in his home country. “He loved his country and wanted to finish university and make his life there. He was doing well, running his own property agency.”
For two weeks after the protests she heard nothing because of the internet shutdown. She scoured reports on social media. Then her brother-in-law managed to call and told her that her son was dead and already buried.
“When I came home from school and saw my mum crying next to a photo of my brother I knew what had happened,” said her daughter Parmes, 16. “She cried so much that she passed out and ended up in hospital.”
Arya, they learnt, had been shot in the head by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who came into the streets and began shooting at protesters, mowing people down.
Taldiwari’s father was also beaten with an iron bar that night and recently died after three months in a coma.
Arya had been working in property sales and recently set up his own agency. “My brother was an angel,” Parmes said. “He was so kind, so smart.” The family had planned to all meet in Turkey for a holiday this summer.
Like Afshari and, she claims, thousands of other grieving parents, Taldiwari supports Trump’s attack on Iran and wants it to continue. “I don’t think he will stop. And if he does, people of Iran won’t stop. They would rather die than live more under this regime.
“All this sacrifice cannot be for nothing,” she said. “My son had all his life ahead of him and it was taken from him. All he wanted was freedom like young people have in other countries.”
“The world cannot hear or see Arya any more,” she added. “But I will be his voice. They kill our youth, but they only create a fearless army of grieving mothers who have nothing left to lose.”
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