Some of Iran’s richest residents fled to Turkey so they could party while back home their country’s oppressive government was slaughtering thousands of residents as anti-government protests raged.
The well-heeled unimpeded by the economic crisis that first sparked the national outrage have taken shelter in Van, a Turkish province just over 60 miles away from Iran’s border. Reporters with The Telegraph observed “elite Iranians gathering” in a nightclub.
“These people benefit from the regime. They left Iran for now, because they were worried about staying there. Here, they can feel safe,” one Iranian at the club told the outlet.
“They have made a lot of money from their businesses in Iran, and then they come here to spend it,” he added.
On the other side of the mountain range separating Iran and Turkey, tens of thousands of protesters are still pushing ahead with the weeks-long anti-government protests.
Graphic footage that surfaced from the demonstrations in Iran showed an indiscernible number of corpses lined up in rows outside of multiple morgues.
Survivors detailed their experiences watching the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the state’s core military branch, spraying “everyone with gunfire” and “calmly trying to aim for people’s heads.”
President Trump originally promised to intervene if the regime executed protesters, but quietly backed off when officials in Tehran reportedly paused planned mass hangings.
Still, Iran’s judiciary indicated that those accused of Mohareb, an Islamic legal term meaning to wage war against God, could still face execution. Many of the estimated 24,000 protesters who have been arrested are facing the charge.
Activist groups estimate that 3,100 people have been slaughtered since the protests started on Dec. 28. Doctors, though, warned that the death toll could be closer to 16,000 as the regime perpetrates a “genocide under the cover of digital darkness.”
