Coinciding with the anniversary of the 1967 executions, restrictions are imposed on entry to Khavaran.
HRANA News Agency – Today, Friday, March 27, on the anniversary of the mass execution of political prisoners in the summer of 2018, restrictions were once again imposed on the entry of the families of the survivors. This time, they were prevented from entering with flowers to lay flowers on the graves of their loved ones.
According to HRANA News Agency, the news agency of the Human Rights Activists in Iran, today, Friday, 7th of Murad Mah 1401, the survivors of those executed in the summer of 2018 were prevented from entering to lay flowers on the graves of their loved ones.
Attempts to prevent the families of those executed in 1967 from entering the Khavaran cemetery or prosecuting them by security agencies are a common occurrence. Also, in June this year, concrete walls were installed around the Khavaran cemetery. Some families of political prisoners buried in the Khavaran cemetery also reported changes, including changing the entrance and installing CCTV camera posts around the site.
Last year, in a continuation of the increasing pressure on Iranian Baha’i citizens, officials at Behesht-e-Zahra in Tehran prevented the burial of deceased Baha’i citizens in Tehran’s Baha’i cemetery (Golestan Javid). Behesht-e-Zahra officials had told Tehran’s Baha’i citizens that they should use the mass graves that had been created in an unmarked manner in part of Khavaran Cemetery during the widespread executions between 1988 and 1989.
It is likely that this recent action by the authorities in preventing the burial of Baha'i deceased in Golestan Javid and proposing to bury the dead in the mass graves of the massacres of the 1960s is another attempt by the security agencies to destroy some of the evidence of this crime.
After the 1979 revolution, and especially between 1988 and 1998, thousands of political and ideological prisoners in Iran were extrajudicially executed and buried in unmarked places. Some were buried in known cemeteries, but the survivors did not have the right to place tombstones or signs on their graves. The effort to identify these places is important as a means of preserving evidence of crimes against humanity for the purpose of seeking justice and punishing the perpetrators. Despite the passage of several decades since these massacres occurred, not only have the burial sites of many victims not been identified, but there have also been numerous attempts by security agencies to destroy such sites, which are evidence of crimes against humanity.
Source: HRANA
