Iranian protesters fled ‘hell’ at home, watch war from exile

IFarhad Sheikhi, a Ranian activist, struggles to contain his tears as he remembers the sound of gunshots and his fellow demonstrators being hit by a barrage of bullets. Now that he has escaped to Iraq, he observes from a distance as Israel and the United States bombard his nation.

“I literally saw hell,” said the 34-year-old Iranian Kurd in Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan’s second city, as he showed AFP photos he took during recent anti-government protests of bodies lying on the bloodied ground.

But his biggest worry today is for the safety of his family back home.

With the internet under a blackout in Iran, Sheikhi said he relies on a friend who only occasionally manages to get online.

“He calls my father and tells me how they are. That is the only way I get news of them,” he said.

Sheikhi claims that going back to Iran is no longer an option and that his sole remaining goal is to complete his legal education in Germany.

Sheikhi stated that as the third week of the conflict approaches, people are becoming more wary and dealing with deteriorating living conditions.

“They are also still mourning the heavy price they have already paid” during the recent protests, he said, referring to the government crackdown that rights groups say killed thousands.

He said he can’t lose hope that “one day a social revolution will allow me to go back, but for now the risk is too great”.

After the crackdown in January, Sheikhi fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq, fearing arrest and torture back home, where the moustached, bespectacled man had been no stranger to anti-government protests.

In 2022, he joined the vast crowds that poured onto the streets to denounce the death in detention of young Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for wearing her hijab improperly.

Back then, he was jailed three times and subjected to torture that left him with hearing loss. Even so, he once again joined the anti-government protests in December and January.

“The crackdown on the people, the slaughter, it was massive. I saw it myself,” he said.