Less than 24 hours after he lost his sight, Saman had to flee the hospital he had stumbled into the night before, blinded by a security officer in Tehran’s Valiasr Square.
As he lay in his hospital bed, a nurse rushed in and warned him he was being hunted.
“There were two police officers asking for everyone who was shot,” he told The National from an undisclosed location outside Iran.
“The nurse told me they were looking for bed number 25. My bed. They were looking for me. I ran to the check-up room and fled when they went into my room.”
The 31-year-old is one of hundreds of protesters who lost their sight while taking to Iran's streets last autumn following the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.
Saman, who worked in trade, joined protests in Tehran on the day they began, as Ms Amini was being buried hundreds of kilometres away in the Kurdish city of Saqqez.
“I arrived at the square at around 8.10pm and people had already gone home,” he said.
“I was just looking around, on my motorcycle, and I noticed a police officer near me.
“He recognised me. As soon as I saw him, he raised his gun. It was so close and so fast that part of my eye flew out.”
Mersedeh Shahinkar, 38, had also been at the protests from the beginning. Two weeks in, her 60-year-old mother decided to join her, believing her age would protect her and her daughter from the throng of security forces outside their home in Tehran.
Hours later, Mersedeh was left permanently blind in her right eye after security forces opened fire on her, her mother and an elderly friend standing at a bus stop.
“I was shouting at them, screaming at them to not shoot my mother … and I turned around and they shot me in the eye from 10 metres away.”
Rights groups and optometrists have said Iranian security forces deliberately shot at protesters to blind them, claims denied by Tehran as “propaganda”.
An activist working with Mersedeh and Saman is part of a wider group that has helped more than 400 blinded protesters get treated both inside Iran and abroad.
Many of them are denied treatment in Iran, with hospitals “refusing them even eye drops”, the activist said, wishing to remain anonymous following recent threats to her and her family.
“One girl was shot through the window of her home”, with others shot at close range in the hands, arms and legs, particularly in the south-eastern city of Zahedan, where security forces killed dozens of people in a single day, she said.
Mersedeh has long opposed the mandatory hijab and strict dress code imposed on Iranian women. A personal trainer before she was injured, she used to film exercise videos with no hijab and would uncover her hair while walking outside.
“I wasn't going to the street just because of the hijab, we don't and didn't want the Islamic Republic. They are destroying our country,” she told The National via video call from outside Iran.
“Women in Iran don't have any rights.”
'Guns have no power'
“I wasn’t scared or afraid of them at all,” Mersedeh said of security officers during the protests. “If I saw them, I would change direction to pass them without a hijab. They were insulting me but I didn't care.”
After she was shot, she was taken to hospital by a passer-by, with ambulances deemed too unsafe to use, as they often took protesters straight to jail.
“We went to a walk-in clinic, and the receptionist said the government said they aren’t allowed to treat any injured protesters,” she said.
For the next 14 hours, she drifted in and out of consciousness while waiting for a doctor who could treat her.
“I only felt bad for my family. Everyone was crying, but I am proud of myself. I went to the street for Iran and for my daughter,” she said.
“When it happened, I accepted it. But seeing my family react, that was the most painful thing.”
Several operations later, she went back to protest in an eye patch despite severe pain and soon went viral on social media.
“I had to sleep on my stomach for two months. I couldn't look above or around me due to the pain,” she said. “I have very bad pain, even when I exercise. So for now, I’m only walking.”
Her home was raided, and following warnings from relatives of security officers, she fled the country with her 11-year-old daughter.
Saman spent two weeks in hiding before fleeing abroad, where he has kept his current location a secret from even those closest to him.
Although now out of Iran, he still feels unsafe.
“I'm going from city to city, because they’re looking for me,” he said.
He has no vision left in his right eye, but has not had any medical treatment since the night he was shot. He said he has been warned he may have a brain haemorrhage if his injuries are left untreated.
“I lost some of my teeth and I have a lot of headaches” he added, pointing to above his eye. “A lot of pain here.”
“I don’t want to receive any help. It’s not fair to other people. I did this for my country.”
Most blinded protesters were shot in Saqqez and the western city of Mahabad, Rebin Rahmani of the France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network told The National.
Both Saman and Mersedeh cannot return to Iran, but have continued to speak out about the situation in their home country.
Mersedeh continues to post online and hopes for a better future for her daughter.
“I never stopped talking. I’m trying to help people know how to protect themselves,” said Saman, revealing his most recent tattoo, which says “for freedom” in Farsi alongside a bleeding eye.
“Guns have no power. People have power.”
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
POSSIBLE ENGLAND EURO 2020 SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Jordan Pickford, Nick Pope, Dean Henderson.
Defenders: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Kieran Trippier, Joe Gomez, John Stones, Harry Maguire, Tyrone Mings, Ben Chilwell, Fabian Delph.
Midfielders: Declan Rice, Harry Winks, Jordan Henderson, Ross Barkley, Mason Mount, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Forwards: Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi.
What are NFTs?
Are non-fungible tokens a currency, asset, or a licensing instrument? Arnab Das, global market strategist EMEA at Invesco, says they are mix of all of three.
You can buy, hold and use NFTs just like US dollars and Bitcoins. “They can appreciate in value and even produce cash flows.”
However, while money is fungible, NFTs are not. “One Bitcoin, dollar, euro or dirham is largely indistinguishable from the next. Nothing ties a dollar bill to a particular owner, for example. Nor does it tie you to to any goods, services or assets you bought with that currency. In contrast, NFTs confer specific ownership,” Mr Das says.
This makes NFTs closer to a piece of intellectual property such as a work of art or licence, as you can claim royalties or profit by exchanging it at a higher value later, Mr Das says. “They could provide a sustainable income stream.”
This income will depend on future demand and use, which makes NFTs difficult to value. “However, there is a credible use case for many forms of intellectual property, notably art, songs, videos,” Mr Das says.
MATCH INFO
Liverpool 4 (Salah (pen 4, 33', & pen 88', Van Dijk (20')
Leeds United 3 (Harrison 12', Bamford 30', Klich 66')
Man of the match Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
Captain Marvel
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn
4/5 stars
What are the influencer academy modules?
- Mastery of audio-visual content creation.
- Cinematography, shots and movement.
- All aspects of post-production.
- Emerging technologies and VFX with AI and CGI.
- Understanding of marketing objectives and audience engagement.
- Tourism industry knowledge.
- Professional ethics.
