On Friday, March 14—the last Friday of the Iranian calendar year, which begins on March 21—families of political prisoners executed in the 1980s held a commemoration ceremony behind closed doors at Khavaran Cemetery.
This ceremony took place under the ongoing restrictions imposed by Iranian regime’s security forces, who have kept the gates of Khavaran Cemetery closed for the past year, preventing families from visiting their loved ones’ graves to honor their memory.
The families of political prisoners executed in the 1980s have protested the burial of deceased members of the Baha’i community in the mass grave section designated for political prisoners executed in the summer of 1988. This protest has also been supported by the Baha’i community.
Pursuing Justice for Iran’s 1988 Massacre: A Significant Step Forward
The Khavaran families have stated that they consider this action part of a deliberate policy to erase the evidence of the organized mass execution of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.
In 1988, the Iranian regime executed 30,000 political prisoners, the majority of whom were supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), within a matter of weeks.
There have been numerous reports in the past regarding the Iranian regime’s repeated prevention of families of executed political prisoners from entering Khavaran Cemetery in Tehran to hold commemorative ceremonies.
Regarding Khavaran Cemetery, the Iranian government has long been barring families of executed political and ideological prisoners from visiting the site while simultaneously forcibly burying deceased Baha’i citizens in the section where political prisoners from the 1988 executions were laid to rest.
The Khavaran families see this action as an attempt by the Iranian regime to erase “the evidence of the massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s, particularly in the summer of 1988,” and they have repeatedly protested this practice.
Khavaran Cemetery, located in southeastern Tehran along Khavaran Road and adjacent to cemeteries belonging to religious minorities, is the burial site of thousands of political and ideological prisoners who were executed in the summer of 1988. These individuals were secretly buried in mass graves without identification.
The mass execution of political prisoners in August and September 1988 remains one of the darkest chapters of former Iranian regime’s president Ebrahim Raisi’s record of crimes. Nearly 36 years later, much remains unknown about the full extent of these atrocities. Raisi was a key member of the notorious “Death Commission,” a five-member panel that conducted brief trials lasting only a few minutes before sending prisoners to the execution squads.
