Borhan Mansornia: a Kurdish Veterinarian Killed in the Gasoline Protests in Iran

Radiozamaneh – Borhan Mansornia (1991-2019) was only 28 years old when he was shot in the November uprising in the Kurdish majority city of Kermanshah. A Doctor of Veterinary medicine, Borhan came from a Kurdish family and was serving his mandatory military service in the city of Kermanshah, where some of his family resided.

Borhan Mansornia was killed in the city of Kermanshah.

Major protests in Iran began when the Iranian government announced a major hike in the price of gasoline at midnight of14 Nov 2019. Immediately thousands of protesters occupied streets and organized. Security forces and antiriot police were sent to crack down on the protests. The antiriot police used excessive force and firearms to shoot at the protesters and consequently, the protests became more violent and angry crowds attacked banks and police vehicles in many cities.

The regime responded with an iron fist, police and other security forces shooting brutally and indiscriminately at people. According to Amnesty International, the confirmed number of protesters killed in Iran has risen to at least 208. Although, most sources who are doing body counts including Amnesty International agree that the real death toll is likely to be significantly higher.

Kurdistan and Khuzestan, the two provinces with a substantial number of ethnic and religious minority citizens, suffered the highest casualties. The Kurdish and Arab families who had lost loved ones in the protests were also the target of much harassment by the security forces. The families have been forced to keep quiet and bury their loved ones in cities away from the place that they were killed at.
Behdad Bordbar has conducted an interview with one of the close friends of Burhan Mansourian. In this article, you read parts of this interview.

The youngest of four brothers Borhan Mansornia come from an educated family and graduated from the school of Veterinary Medicine. He was serving his mandatory military service in Kermanshah. He was on 24 hours leave when gasoline protests began in the city of Kermanshah and he was staying at his brother’s place in the same city.

When people gathered in Dowlatabad Street, Borhan told his older brother at home how ashamed he was of himself to be chilling at home while others were participating in the uprising.

Borhan then left home to participate in protest while telling his family members that he was going to get a haircut in the nearby barbershop of his friend. The shop was closed so he ends up joining the protests. He was shot from behind in the protest in the abdominal area and his intestines were ruptured which lead to his subsequent death from internal bleeding at the hospital.

Local neighbors brought him to their house’s backyard and called his older brother for help. Borhan’s brother drove him in a state of panic to the hospital. He then called an ambulance and drove him to Farabi Hospital, but the hospital refused to admit Borhan. So they took him to Talelghani Hospital where he underwent surgery.

“At both hospitals, the family had a problem with admittance and hospital staff refused to accept the wounded of the protest,” another source had told Zamaneh’s Farzad SeifiKaran.

“After surgery, his condition somehow improved, although he was still in pain. He was suffering from internal bleeding,” the source who spoke to Behdad Bordbar said.

Since the doctors and nurses did not notice that Borhan was bleeding internally after surgery, his condition deteriorated and he passed away after 36 hours of being shot in the stomach.

The Islamic Republic’s security forces shot him and with the medical personnel’s negligence leads to his death. The family is particularly angry at the staff at Taleghani hospital who did not attend to Borhan’s conditions as they should.

A source close to the family who spoke to Behdad Bordbar says:

“Borhan did not want to study Natural Sciences at high school. He was in love with literature and philosophy. He wanted to go for a master’s degree in psychology. He was reading Irvin D. Yalom and other existentialists. He was a voracious reader, loved Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Zizek, and was extremely interested in existentialism. He also was read novels. They used to have hot debates about politics in his family.”

The source close to the family who talked to Behdad Bordbar on the condition of anonymity recalled that Borhan once got involved in a debate with his older brother about Rojava’s foreign policy. His brother had written a text, arguing that Kurds foreign policy was a failure. “If Rojava claims to be an alternative system of governance, then it should not become allied with the United States, being major powers, it would betray them if they saw fit” Borhan’s brother argued.

Borhan opposed this view and said that “the Kurds in Rojava don’t have any alternatives but to get help from the US.” His argument being that Rojava, being a landlocked nation, had no choice but to cooperate with super-powers.

Borhan was familiar with the Kurdish plight in other regions and would read about crises in Rojava, ISIS’s attack against Kubane and the occupation of Afrin.

Borhan participated in the protest and was shot by a military assault rifle. His body was sent to autopsy but the results were not revealed to his family at full disclosure. Authorities told his family that there were clashes among the protesters and very likely he was shot by them, and not by military forces, a clear signal to the family to abandon their hopes for justice.

The family was also forced – like many other families of protesters who were killed – to make burial arrangements for Borhan in a different city than that of the place of death. Borhan was buried in the city of Marivan in Kurdistan. His family was pressured not to hold any funeral ceremonies. The family has been called in and interrogated by security forces a number of times since the passing of Borhan.

Read the story of Borhan Mansournia in Zamaneh Media’s Persian site: