A haunting image shows a pile of abandoned shoes after Iran’s bloodthirsty regime trapped surrendering protesters in a historic bazaar and burned them alive — in what is being likened to “Iran’s Holocaust.”
The picture, taken in the city of Rasht, northwest Iran, shows the aftermath of the massacre on Jan. 8, in which regime henchmen set fire to the popular marketplace, trapping demonstrators inside and opening fire on those who tried to escape, according to eyewitness accounts and human rights organizations.
“If this is not a crime against humanity, what is?” Arash Sigarchi, award-winning journalist, former Iranian political prisoner and Managing Editor of Voice of America’s Persian Division, said, sharing the image on X.
He compared the picture to the display of victims’ shoes at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and branded the Iranian theocracy as “Nazi-like.”
“These shoes in Rasht are not art,” Suren Edgar, vice president of the Australian-Iranian Community Alliance, also wrote on X, alongside the heartbreaking image.
“They belonged to people trapped after regime forces set the historic bazaar on fire and shot those trying to escape. The imagery is unmistakable — an Iranian Holocaust unfolding in real time.”
The victims of the Rasht massacre had reportedly surrendered to security forces before being slaughtered, according to Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norway-based NGO.
Footage of the aftermath, shared by the rights organization, also shows the burned-out, smoldering remains of the bazaar.
Iran remains under an internet blackout since Jan. 8, when authorities all but cut ordinary Iranians off from the outside world, allowing security forces to act with impunity.
“The mass killings started right after the internet blackout,” IHR’s founder, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, toldBritish newspaper The Observer.
