'Masha', a young Iranian woman in Italy: 'We are alone while the massacre continues'

While repression continues in Iran, abroad the voices of those who have long since left the country try to make space for themselves on social networks and group chats. Young people in particular, such as Mahsa (not her own name, but chosen in memory of Masha Amini, killed in 2022 in Tehran by the religious police, ndr) are trying.

Masha has lived in Italy for several years, she came there to study and then stopped, because returning to Iran would be too dangerous. She tells us that in the past few days, the regime has opened the border with Iraq to let in groups of Iraqi popular mobilisation units on buses, terrorising the inhabitants with automatic weapons and machine guns. And it also tells us the very sad chapter of the restitution of the bodies of the killed protesters: the regime demands frighteningly high sums that most families cannot pay. In that case, a second option is proposed: to sign that the family member killed was part of the forces of order, the Guards of the Revolution, so as to count him among the government's dead, martyrs of the regime.

His message is a meek and almost desperate plea, not to let oblivion descend on the too many lives broken by the regime's purges and vendettas, to ask for a shake and help from the world, while news and images from the places of terror filter with difficulty. Here is his heartfelt testimony.