Anger boils over Iranian authority accusing blinded protestors of lying

Propaganda billboards installed by Tehran municipality in the Iranian capital, accusing protestors of lying, have sparked off anger among those blinded by metal pellets during the crackdown on last year's protests.

Tehran's municipality, now controlled by the ultra-conservative politician Alireza Zakani, had previously put up other billboards denouncing women who defied the compulsory hijab law.

The new propaganda billboards were designed in a series that the municipality named "the good feeling of life", and one of the images in the series showed Pinocchio with a long nose, walking past three characters with one eye.

Instead of the second eye, there was a white hole on the face of the three characters resembling the eye shields used by those who lost their eyes during the demonstrations. Under this graphic design, a Farsi sentence read: "There is no good in liars".

In response, Iranians took to Faris's social media, denouncing the authority for the accusations they made against those wounded in the anti-establishment demonstration that rocked the country after the death of Mahsa Amini in Islamic morality police custody.

The protestors who were blinded by the security forces also posted photos of their eyes on social media.

In an Instagram story, Mersedeh Shahinkar, a fitness instructor, posted the images of her lost an eye and wrote: "Is this a lie? Damn you, I wish it was a lie."

In an Instagram post last October, she explained how the plainclothes security forces attacked her in Tehran's Sattarkhan Street in one of the demonstrations.

On 15 May, BBC Farsi published the footage of a protest organised by Iranians in Frankfurt, in which two men who sustained eye injuries in last year's demonstrations rejected the authorities' accusations.

"We are here as witnesses to testify against the new campaign run by the Islamic Republic [of Iran] in which it labelled us liars. This is the Islamic Republic that lies to spread fear among the people," said Milad Safari in the Frankfurt protest. 

Meanwhile, a video went viral on social media showing one of the propaganda billboards in Tehran was set on fire by citizens. 

According to reports by human rights organisations, over 100 protestors were blinded in the 2022 demonstrations with rubber bullets and metal pellets.