According to published reports, the bodies of 50 women killed in Iran’s January uprising remain unidentified at the Kahrizak Forensic Medicine Center, located south of Tehran. This issue has been raised while the regime’s Forensic Medicine Organization and judiciary have officially denied the existence of “50 unidentified bodies of female protesters from Tehran.”
In its statement, the Forensic Medicine Organization claimed that only seven unidentified bodies are held at the center, all of them male, and that all deceased women have been identified and handed over to their families. The statement described the report about 50 unidentified bodies as “completely unreal and an absolute lie,” and also denied that any visit to the facility had taken place by the Sociology Association of Tarbiat Modares University, a major public university in Tehran.
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However, remarks by a member of the regime’s Majlis (parliament) present a different picture. Mohammad Seraj, a member of the Majlis Social Commission, referring to the existence of unidentified bodies, stated: “Some bodies have not been identified; no one has come forward to follow up on them, and they did not have identification documents with them. Therefore, we must take various approaches to identify them.”
This clear contradiction between the official denial by government bodies and the statements of a parliament member once again highlights the regime’s efforts to control the real number of those killed and to conceal the scope of the uprising’s repression. Such inconsistencies show that the reality regarding the number and status of the victims’ bodies remains shrouded in ambiguity.
The dimensions of the January crime are not limited to the death toll. The widespread repression of protesters, mass arrests, pressure and threats against families to remain silent, prevention of memorial ceremonies, and efforts to conceal the true number of those killed are part of an organized policy implemented to instill fear and prevent the expansion of the uprising.
