Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi: Regime May Commit 'Massacre' amid Internet Shutdown

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said the Iranian security forces may use the ongoing internet shutdown to carry out a "massacre." 

Internet monitoring organization Netblocks said the internet shutdown in Iran had been going on for over 24 hours. 

"What make tonight especially dangerous is the deliberate darkness: internet and phone networks pushed toward collapse so that families cannot find their loved ones, journalists cannot document, and the world cannot witness," Ebadi posted on Telegram. 

"A blackout is not a technical failure in Iran; it is a tactic."   

Ebadi said that on Thursday night there were reports that at least 400 people in Tehran "were taken to a single hospital with severe eye injuries caused by pellet gun fire."

"Even more alarming are reports that security forces attacked hospitals and tried to arrest the wounded," Ebadi said. "A state that hunts the injured in hospital corridors has crossed a line that no society should accept and no world should ignore.

"To Western governments and international institutions: silence is not prudence. It is permission. Your inaction lowers the cost of murder," Ebadi said.  

Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, currently lives in London, but was born in the western Iranian city of Hamadan, where protests have been reported. 

She has worked to protect human rights in Iran and founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran.