In early October, a couple of month into Iran’s anti-government protests, a resident of Tehran reported seeing no less than three protesters being compelled into an ambulance throughout a student-led demonstration. However, residents stated the protesters didn’t seem like injured.
“They grabbed folks,” she stated. “They put them within the ambulance and turned off the lights. There have been lots of people within the again.” The ambulance then drove off down the road. “I could not see the place they have been dropping folks off, however I may see that there have been regular folks inside, like younger women.”
Protests calling for widespread social and political change that erupted in September led to a brutal crackdown by Iranian safety forces, with greater than 14,000 folks arrested, in accordance with the United Nations. At least 326 folks have been killed, in accordance with the Norway-based NGO Iranian Human Rights. The demonstrations, which started after Mahsa Amini, identified by her first Kurdish surname Zina, was detained by Iran’s ethical police, have been led primarily by ladies.
Part of that crackdown has included safety forces utilizing ambulances to infiltrate protests and detain protesters, in accordance with witnesses and dozens of movies and pictures reviewed by The New York Times. It was. Nearly all of the witnesses interviewed by the Times spoke on situation of anonymity for worry of retaliation from the federal government.
Experts say using such ambulances violates worldwide requirements for medical impartiality and reveals the lengths to which the federal government has gone to attempt to quell nationwide protests. .
“People might be afraid to hunt medical care, which suggests extra folks will die,” stated Rohini Har, an assistant professor on the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “Medicine has credibility by way of the thought of impartiality. That is the elemental thought of ’do no hurt,’ and the misuse of ambulances clearly violates that.”
Security forces utilizing an ambulance
In an interview through an encrypted messaging app, the 37-year-old restaurant employee stated he witnessed ambulances coming into the college campus and uniformed safety forces exiting it nearly every single day through the protests. Told. He works close to his three main universities in Tehran, the place he sees protests every single day. He stated he had attended different protests the place he additionally witnessed safety forces utilizing ambulances.
Witnesses on the protests in Tehran stated they noticed plainclothes cops often known as Basij push college students into the again of an ambulance throughout an indication at Sharif University on October 2.
One witness stated in an interview over an encrypted messaging app that Basij used a baton to hit one of many college students, who was on the bottom coated in bruises, earlier than pushing him into an ambulance with one other protester and driving off. reported seeing it.
Early within the protests, protesters took to the streets in Rasht, the capital of Gilan province in northern Iran.
One video, its location talked about The footage, taken by a Twitter consumer and independently verified by The Times, seems to have been taken from contained in the car and reveals an ambulance on hearth, apparently the goal of protesters. Someone within the automobile yelled, “We’re rescuing the ladies!” come out! “As the automobile approached the ambulance.
The video reveals a person carrying garments resembling an Iranian National Police uniform get out of the ambulance and run away. He is briefly chased by a bunch of individuals earlier than escaping.
The Times confirmed the video to Afshon Ostvar, an affiliate professor on the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who focuses on Iranian nationwide safety.
“That undoubtedly seems to be like a NAJA officer,” Ostwal stated in an interview, utilizing the acronym for Iran’s National Police. “He’s not a paramedic. The uniform and the firearm are a complete reward.” The gun Ostvall referred to might have been in a holster clipped to the again of the person operating from the ambulance within the video.
The video doesn’t present who set the ambulance on hearth, however one other video from a unique angle reveals the identical ambulance being pushed apart and swarmed by a crowd.
police station ambulance
The Times analyzed and geolocated movies and pictures exhibiting ambulances coming into, exiting, or stationed simply exterior police stations in no less than six places across the nation (in a single case). So that place was the primary) talked about (by Twitter consumer).
Two of the places have hospitals close by, in accordance with Google Maps, and a video from one clearly reveals an ambulance coming into the police station.
The video and pictures don’t present who’s being transported, however a former emergency room physician stated there was no legitimate medical motive for the ambulance to cease on the police station.
“I can say with nearly one hundred pc accuracy that one thing like this can by no means occur,” stated Dr. Amir Alishahi Tabriz, who labored at Tehran’s Logman-e-Hakim and Turfeh hospitals in 2013. . He is now based mostly within the United States and dealing with medical doctors. In Iran, to assist sufferers injured in protests obtain medical therapy.
“People do not feel protected going to emergency care or hospitals. They know the navy is ready to get them,” he stated. “When sufferers need assistance, we ship them to the well being middle in the course of the night time.”
Anger amongst Iranian medical employees
The use of ambulances to detain folks has infuriated Iran’s medical group. A video posted on Twitter on October 4 and seen by The Times reveals medical employees exterior Rasht’s Raj University Hospital shouting, “Basisji are usually not college students” and “an ambulance must be used to move sufferers.” The footage reveals folks demonstrating whereas holding up placards that learn.
Another video posted on Twitter on October twenty firstThe picture, deliberately blurred to guard the topic’s identification, reveals an indication that seems to have taken place on the Mashhad Medical Society constructing. At the demonstration, a speaker learn a press release condemning using ambulance and medical symbols by safety forces, saying, “In order to realize public belief, we would like it to cease.”
The Times verified that the room proven within the blurry video matched archive footage of the amphitheater within the Mashhad Medical Association constructing.
Dr. Haar, of the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, stated the medical group’s actions throughout protests and civil unrest are protected by worldwide human rights regulation.
“The ideas of impartiality and independence, care of the injured, and never exploiting medical symbols for political acquire are universally accepted foundations on which your complete well being system relies upon,” she stated. “Health care employees have an obligation to deal with the injured and sick, and the federal government has an obligation to assist them.”
Apart from the protests in Rasht and Mashhad, different members of the medical group have additionally raised considerations in regards to the misuse of ambulances. On October 22, the Medical Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the licensing and regulatory physique for medical professionals, expressed concern about using ambulances for non-medical transport.
For many in Iran, using ambulances to quell protests additional reinforces their mistrust of the nation’s well being system. There are stories that Iranians injured through the protests have been detained after being handled at hospitals.
One of the protesters in Tehran stated in an interview that many individuals are treating their accidents at residence as an alternative of going to hospitals due to the local weather of worry.
“We felt essentially the most anxious after we noticed the police. But now we have unleashed a brand new degree of worry. Now we really feel essentially the most distressed after we see the ambulance” in Tehran. one of many protesters stated. “And each time we’re caught in visitors, it creates a dilemma: What if there’s an actual affected person there? Or what if they will kill us?”
Christiaan Triebert, Christoph Koettl and Malachy Browne contributed reporting. Video graphics by James Surdam. Claire Hogan contributed video modifying.
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