Government Agents Once Again Block Families of Executed Prisoners from Entering Khavaran

Agents of the Islamic Republic once again prevented the families of political prisoners executed in the 1980s from entering the Khavaran cemetery in Tehran to hold a memorial for the executed. According to the Telegram channel 'Manifesto of Freedom, Welfare, Equality', a group of families of the political prisoners executed in the 1980s visited Khavaran cemetery on Friday, August 24, to commemorate the executed. The report states that government agents not only closed the cemetery gates to the families but also collected photos and flowers that the families had placed at the entrance of the cemetery. The Iranian government has long been preventing the families from accessing this cemetery while also forcibly burying the bodies of Baha'i citizens in the section designated for political prisoners executed in the summer of 1988. The families of Khavaran assess the government's aim in this action as the erasure of 'the evidence of the crime of the massacre of political prisoners in the 1980s, especially in the summer of 1988' and have repeatedly protested against this process. Khavaran cemetery, located in the southeast of Tehran along the Khavaran road, alongside several cemeteries belonging to religious minorities, contains the remains of thousands of political and ideological prisoners executed in the summer of 1988, who were secretly buried in mass graves without identification. These political prisoners, who were members and supporters of leftist organizations and the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, were executed by the order of a body known as the 'Death Commission'. According to the Human Rights Campaign in Iran, 'the mass execution of political prisoners in the months of Mordad and Shahrivar 1988 is considered the darkest part of Ebrahim Raisi's list of crimes, and even after nearly 36 years, little information is available about it.'