The 37th Anniversary of the National Catastrophe of the Massacre of Political Prisoners and the Role of the Mothers of Khavaran in Raising the Level of the Movement for Justice in Iran
Thirty-seven years have passed since the blood-soaked summer of 1988 and the horrific massacre of dissidents and freedom fighters serving prison sentences in Iran’s political prisons. Immediately after the end of the ruinous Iran-Iraq war and Ayatollah Khomeini’s (the supreme religious leader’s) declaration that the end of the war was like drinking the “poisoned chalice”, a war which had caused immense material and spiritual losses and left thousands dead and injured, a war that Khomeini stubbornly called a “blessing”, the regime of the Islamic Republic put into effect a bloody campaign of executions in the prisons—what the regime’s rulers and their henchmen called “purification”. It was a sinister plan the regime had long sought to implement, waiting for a convenient moment to swiftly consolidate the rule of political Islam in our homeland.
This unprecedented crime was carried out in August–September 1988, in the wake of the failure of the disastrous policy of exporting political Islam under the slogan “The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala”. In secrecy and with families kept completely in the dark, “death committees” appointed by Khomeini sought to take revenge on the true sons and daughters of Iran, for the regime’s own scandalous policy of continuing the war even after the invading Iraqi forces had been pushed back to pre-war borders. In that ominous, black summer, for weeks, visitations were cut off. The anguished families of political prisoners, from multiple parties and organizations, went anxiously to government and judicial offices hoping to obtain even the smallest news of their loved ones, but were met with harassment, humiliation, and insults.
In December 1988, amidst shock and disbelief, the secret of this great crime was revealed by some families of political prisoners, especially brave mothers who had continually followed up the situation of their loved ones in the regime’s dungeon. These mothers went to Khavaran cemetery, to where the regime’s executioners had previously buried fallen fighters from leftist organizations, and, seeing unusual, suspicious marks on the ground, out of sight of the regime’s guards, they managed to move aside some earth and discover clear evidence of buried bodies. They recorded part of this evidence with a camera, as proof of the regime’s horrific, anti-human crime and of what happened—and continues to happen—to our country’s daughters and sons.
In those dark suffocating years, when the so-called “God of the ‘80s”, the regime’s apparatus of repression, was rampant, the mothers and spouses of political prisoners from different groups and organizations—who, unlike today, lacked popular support—channeled their anger and grief into efforts to expose the regime’s crime and turned their anger and sorrow into a growing force seeking justice, a movement that had begun before the revolution already with the victims of the Pahlavi dictatorship’s continuous executions.
At that dark time, many families whose children had also been among those who had opposed the Shah’s dictatorship, knew each other from prison visiting days under the monarchy. The deep bonds among the families of political prisoners—formed behind prison walls or while following up their loved ones’ cases through repressive judicial and governmental bodies—enabled them to organize joint protest actions regardless of the organizational affiliation of their loved ones. These ranged from collective actions in filing complaints with various domestic and international bodies, to documenting demands and gathering names of those executed, to gatherings in front of prisons and also in front of the UN office to meet with Galindo Pohl in Tehran, and more.
As Monireh Baradaran, former political prisoner and human-rights activist, says, from the outset they wrote letters to official domestic and international authorities that, in addition to the tone of anger, consistently employed legal and justice-seeking language. For example, on December 26, 1988, the mothers and families of the martyrs and political prisoners, in a collective protest action in front of the Palace of Justice, set out their demands in an open letter addressed to Hassan Habibi, then Minister of Justice of the Islamic Republic. In part, they declared:
1) Announce, for each victim, the date of the trial, the duration of the court’s review of the case, the reason for a retrial, and the location of the trial.
2) Inform the families of the victims of the burial sites and the dates of execution.
3) Return the victims’ wills to their families.
4) Announce the number and names of those executed.
5) Because this action is an explicit violation of the principles of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we file charges against those responsible for this tragedy and demand that they be arrested and tried in a public court.
6) We request that the Islamic Republic agree to a visit by an international delegation to investigate the country’s prisons and permit the delegation to meet with political prisoners and the families of the victims of this tragedy. (Cited in Nameh-ye Mardom, no. 252.)
Although this collective action, as always, was cut short by the intervention of security forces, who beat the families, including elderly, grieving mothers, and arrested some, and, in particular, prevented the delivery of the letter to the Ministry of Justice, the resounding voice of the Khavaran mothers for justice reached international human-rights bodies even amid the choking atmosphere of the time and the lack of information channels, something inconceivable today, and was recorded in the collective historical memory of the families’ struggles, especially the brave Khavaran mothers. (the full text of the letter and the families’ demands—still urgent and relevant—appears in the appendix to this article).*
These actions for justice exposed the perpetrators of this inhumane massacre and stood in direct opposition to the regime’s policy of covering up the crime, imposing silence about it, and manipulating collective memory. Mothers and families for justice rose up in various ways to reveal the truth, including through a truth-finding committee, and to fight against consigning the crime to oblivion, and this struggle continues. The unfinished and ongoing struggle of Iran’s mothers and families for justice truly fits the historical saying about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Argentina): “We were the first mothers to be born of our children.”
Many Khavaran mothers for justice also embody the image of brave, rights-demanding mothers who have been born of their valiant children and who continue to pursue their loved ones’ human ideals. Although many of them have passed away without seeing the regime’s criminals held accountable for why and how their loved ones were executed, they have left a legacy on Iran’s movement for justice.
By continuously and tirelessly recounting the true nature of this national tragedy, and in the face of the regime’s conspiracy of silence, the courageous mothers have kept the banner of justice-seeking aloft. Then, they have been shoulder to shoulder with other mothers and families for justice, those against the regime’s oppression and crime, from the families of the victims of assassinations in 1998 that came to be known as chain murders, the Tehran University dormitory attack by the regime in 1999, the victims of the brutal suppression of protests in December 2017 and November 2019, the downing the Ukrainian aircraft, and the great Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. In all these they have played a major role in the formation and expansion of the discourse for justice, in our homeland. This search for justice has not been about private revenge but about uncovering the truth, including via a truth commission, and prosecuting the perpetrators and masterminds, in order to prevent future crimes.
The Democratic Organization of Iranian Women believes that the movement for justice in our homeland—in which the women and mothers of Khavaran were among the brave pioneers—has become one of the key pillars of the social movement of our people’s struggle against despotism, whether theocratic or monarchical. The mothers and spouses of the families of our people’s martyrs, together with political prisoners and all progressive, fighting forces of the popular movement, play a significant role in this struggle to achieve freedom and social justice and, in particular, in the “No to Execution” movement. They emphatically demand the unconditional freedom of all political prisoners, as well as working class activists, prisoners of conscience, and journalist prisoners in Iran.
Honor to the memory of all the martyrs of the national tragedy and all who fell in the cause of freedom and social justice!
Endless salutations to the mothers and wives of Khavaran and to all the families of the martyrs, who have never ceased to expose this monstrous crime!
Democratic Organization of Iranian Women
August 29, 2025
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* Full text of the letter
Dr. Habibi, Minister of Justice,
We address you as the Minister of “Justice” of the Islamic Republic.
In recent months, horrific actions have taken place in the prisons of our country. The execution of thousands of political prisoners—most of whom had already been tried, had received sentences, and were serving them, and some had even completed their terms—has caused a wave of astonishment and sorrow among public opinion in Iran and the world, and everyone seeks an appropriate answer for these actions.
We, the mothers, fathers, and relatives of these victims, ask ourselves every moment why our valiant children should be so mercilessly slaughtered. Claims that seek to ascribe them to the military operations of this or that group on the country’s borders are altogether false given the conditions prevailing in the prisons, because our children were living under the harshest conditions. Visitations were once every 15 days, only ten minutes long, through glass and by telephone, and they were deprived of any means of communication with the outside world, which we have experienced firsthand over the past seven years—these facts prove our claim. — We ask:
If the actions of the authorities were legal, why were the executions kept hidden from everyone’s eyes?
We ask: If these actions were justified, why are they not announced openly? Why must visitations—which are the natural right of every prisoner—be cut off?
Why were our children, in an enclosure where even many officials are considered “unrelated/forbidden” (namahram), delivered in groups to the nooses?
We ask: Why do the authorities oppose a visit by a neutral international delegation to the prisons and meetings with prisoners and families of the prisoners and victims?
We ask: Which constitutional principle has authorized the authorities—both in the past and now—to conduct trials behind closed doors and in conditions where the prisoner does not have the right to utter even a single word in his or her own defense?
We ask: Which court, on what charges, on what date, issued the death sentences of our loved ones? This, while, for example, the case of a newspaper like Payam-e Nabowat is examined for months, and the charges and crimes there are crystal clear to the public.
We ask: Which law has permitted issuing collective death sentences? … and thousands of other questions, great and small. We, the families of the victims of the recent massacre and the families of political prisoners, demand your immediate, serious, and responsible action. We present the following demands:
1) Announce, for each victim, the date of the trial, the duration for which the court reviewed the case, the reason for a retrial, and the location of the trial.
2) Inform the families of the burial place and the date of execution for all victims.
3) Return the victims’ wills to their families.
4) Announce the number and names of those executed.
5) Because this action is an explicit violation of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we file charges against those responsible for this painful tragedy and demand that they be arrested and tried in a public court.
6) We request that the Islamic Republic agree to a visit by an international delegation to examine the situation of the country’s prisons and permit this delegation to meet with political prisoners and the families of the victims of the recent tragedy.
A large group of families of the martyrs of the recent massacre of political prisoners
Copies to:
1) Office of Ayatollah al-Uzma Montazeri
2) United Nations Office in Iran
3) Mr. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations
4) All humanitarian and progressive organizations and circles.
