Over 100 days after the brutal and unprecedented crackdown during Iran’s national uprising, life will never be the same for many of the young people who took to the streets. As waves of arrests, executions and heavy sentences continue to mount, dozens of young protesters are now in a state of limbo between hiding and constant flight. They cannot return home, switch on their phones or even spend two nights in the same place.
Independent Persian has learned from sources in Tehran, Karaj, Zanjan, Mashhad, Isfahan, Rasht, Shiraz, Kermanshah and Kish that some individuals who took part in demonstrations in January have gone into hiding after repeated summons and attempted arrests by security forces. The constant fear of arrest has turned every ringing doorbell, unknown phone call or checkpoint into a potential nightmare of torture, disappearance, execution or death in custody.
A 22-year-old protestor who joined the demonstrations in Tehran and is now hiding in northern Iran told Independent Persian: “For four months, there hasn’t been a single night when I’ve felt safe. I don’t have a home anymore. Every few days I move from one place to another.”
“Even my mother doesn’t know my exact location. Sometimes I call her using an anonymous SIM card just so she knows I’m still alive. It feels like I’ll have to stay in hiding until the fall of the Islamic Republic, whenever that may be. Because if I’m arrested, I’m certain I’ll receive a death sentence like my friends.”
They say several people from their hometown have already been sentenced to death. Others have either fled Iran through mountain routes or have gone into hiding like him: “Even when one of the guys messages you on Telegram, your first thought is that maybe the phone is in the hands of security agents.”
An Amnesty International report published earlier this week revealed that Iran had the highest number of recorded executions worldwide in 2025. US Senator Lindsey Graham has called for “a Second Amendment solution” in Iran, where civilians take up arms, however as the accounts shared with Independent Persian demonstrate, the challenges faced by protestors are complex with the state imposing a range of measures to persecute dissent.
A 20-year-old student from Mashhad, who went into hiding instead of returning home after being summoned by security agencies, said that the execution of several detainees from the January protests pushed fear among young protesters to a new level.
“We thought maybe we’d go to prison and then be released,” the student said. “But when we saw they were executing people one by one, we realised this was something entirely different. They were even more brutal than before. Now most people are just trying to stay alive.”
They say they have even changed their appearance and lifestyle: “I cut my hair, grew a beard, changed the way I dress. I used to go out every day, but now I stay inside the place where I’m hiding for two straight weeks without leaving.”
A number of young women are living under similar conditions. A protester in their early 20s from southern Iran, who was arrested and detained for a few days in January, is now living in hiding. They told Independent Persian: “Even after my release, I wasn’t really free. They called me every week, summoned me, threatened me.
“Eventually I realised that either I’d end up back in prison or I’d have to disappear. My lawyer also warned me that if I were to be arrested again, I could face execution because of confessions made by several other detainees.”
They say they have rarely gone home in recent months and missed their younger sibling’s birthday. “To keep pressure off my family, I hardly ever go home. Some nights my mother just cries and says, ‘I wish you had never gone to the protests.’”
A 19-year-old from western Iran who was wounded by shotgun pellets during the January demonstrations says the pellets are still lodged in their body, yet they are too afraid to go to hospital. They told Independent Persian: “I’m scared the hospital security staff or some doctors will report me. Many people were arrested that way. I didn’t even seek treatment for my eye.”
Now living in a house outside his home province, they say they are haunted by nightmares every night: “Unlike them, our hands aren’t stained with anyone’s blood, we haven’t committed any crime. But I still wake up terrified, thinking they’ve come to break down the door and execute me. I can’t even remember what normal life used to feel like.”
Others say they have been completely cut off from their previous lives. A protester in Shiraz said: “I’ve effectively been erased from life. I can’t go to work, I can’t return to university, I can’t even use my bank card. Our lives have become constant escape and hiding. Sometimes I disappear into the mountains and wilderness, other times I hide at the homes of distant friends and relatives. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. Maybe in the end I’ll just get exhausted and turn myself in.”
According to sources, the security pressure is not limited to the protesters themselves; their families are also being interrogated, threatened and monitored. Some families have reportedly been forced to sign pledges, had their phones monitored, and even been threatened with arrest in order to pressure their children into surrendering.
A source close to the family of one detainee in Rasht said: “The agents told his father that if he didn’t return, they would arrest his younger brother instead. The families have effectively been taken hostage.”
At the same time, human rights groups warn that, in addition to the wave of executions, the Islamic Republic has subjected the younger generation of protesters to a form of “long-term psychological attrition”; a generation that, months after the end of the protests, still lives in a state of vigilance, instability and constant fear.
At the end of our conversation, after several seconds of silence and while anxiously worrying that the call might be monitored, one of the young protesters we spoke to uttered a sentence that captures the reality faced by many survivors of the January protests today. “We’re alive, but we’re not living. Day and night, all we think about is how not to get arrested and executed. How much longer do you think we’ll have to wait for the collapse of the regime or for another nationwide uprising to begin?”
