Since the outbreak of the protests, there has been a race to estimate and report on the casualties – something I call a “Death Toll Olympics”.
Iran-focused human rights organisations led by dissident activists have been going through all sorts of evidence and testimonies to verify the number of the dead. As of writing this piece, the US-based organisation HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency) has cited more than 6,000 deaths and a further 17,000-plus cases under examination.
However, there are valid doubts about the speed of the activist-led verification process.
For every reported death, multiple accounts have to be examined, possible duplications must be identified and eliminated; and dates, locations and specific circumstances must be cross-checked against the timeline of events.
Furthermore, any visual evidence has to be localised and authenticated based on open-source data or corroborated by the accounts of multiple witnesses. From an investigative standpoint, the reliability and quality of activist-led counts that increase rapidly on a daily basis, therefore warrants caution.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, has cited a conservative estimate of around 5,000 deaths. At the same time, she has mentioned that unverified numbers of up to 20,000 have been reported to her by medical sources.
The described obstacles, and difficulties of verification over the past weeks, have been further exacerbated by Iran’s severely restricted internet access. Despite this, major media outlets have begun distributing much higher figures, solely based on vague anonymous sources who claim privileged access within Iran’s government or health sector.