The grave of Yalda Aghafazli, a protester who committed suicide on November 11, 2022, after being detained in Iran. Her grave was vandalized in April (left) and August (right) 2023.
Amnesty International denounces the Iranian authorities for targeting the graves of victims of repression in Iran. The NGO warns of the increasing cases of intimidation and harassment of families of victims in order to ‘silence them’ approaching the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in September.
To pay tribute to him, the family of Amir Javad As’adzadeh had engraved on his grave these few verses: ‘Your name will remain on everyone’s lips, everywhere.’ This Iranian protester was 36 years old when he died in detention, after being arrested and severely beaten by Iranian security forces during a violent protest in Mashhad, northern Iran, on November 19, 2022. Five months later, the epitaph on his grave was completely covered in black paint, his relatives alerted in April 2023.
On the tombstone of Ali Abbasi, a 24-year-old killed by security forces on November 3, 2022, during a violent crackdown on protests in Semirom in the province of Isfahan, the inscription ‘In the name of freedom’ carved in stone was erased in March.
The grave of Ali Abbasi, part of the epitaphs of which was erased in March 2023. © DR / Amnesty International
In total, Amnesty International has documented 21 cases of desecration of graves of victims of the crackdown following the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022, in Iran. Seven of them concern the graves of children. With supporting photos, the NGO shows tombstones damaged by tar, paint, and arson. Sometimes even broken. Epitaphs describing the victims as ‘martyrs’ or indicating that they died for the cause of freedom have all been erased.
‘In some cases, the families of the victims or other witnesses were present when the security forces damaged the graves,’ sources close to the NGO said. ‘In other cases, they were destroyed following repeated threats from the authorities to target the graves if the families did not comply with their demand to change the tombstones mentioning their support for the ‘Women’s Life Freedom’ uprising,’ Amnesty International specifies in a report published on August 21.
Ceremonies ‘violently interrupted,’ graves ‘trampled’
Mahsa Amini’s relatives have not been spared either. In the Kurdish city of Saqqez, her grave has been vandalized several times, and her parents have been prohibited from installing a protective barrier around the tomb.
The authorities also try to prevent families from organizing ceremonies at the graves of their loved ones, including for their anniversaries. Some gatherings have been ‘violently interrupted by the authorities, who have taken photos of the participants and arbitrarily beaten or arrested family members of the victims,’ the NGO denounces in its report.
In April 2023, Milad Saeedianjoo’s sister, a young protester shot dead by security forces on November 15, 2022, in Izeh, in the Khuzestan province, testified on Instagram: ‘To the person who, on the anniversary of my brother’s death, grabbed me by the hair, tortured me with a baton, trampled his grave before my eyes… What verdict do you give yourself for all this? I have been shown who the murderer of my brother is. Our family did not file a complaint in an Iranian court: what irony to go see the murderer to file a complaint against him.’
🎥 مادر میلاد سعیدیانجو، از جانباختگان اعتراضات در ایذه با انتشار این ویدیو از بازداشت دو فرزند دیگرش به دست نیروهای حکومتی خبر داده است.#اعتراضات_سراسری #مهسا_امینی #شهروندخبرنگار pic.twitter.com/t9XI7W0xNx
— ایران وایر (@iranwire) March 3, 2023
‘Arbitrary arrests and detentions’
The connection between grieving families and messages deemed critical of the authorities posted on social media is also closely monitored and subject to reprisals by the Iranian government.
Already bereaved families must remain silent and are subjected to ‘arbitrary arrests and detentions,’ warns Amnesty, ‘prosecutions for vague charges related to national security that sometimes result in imprisonment and flogging, coercive summonses and interrogations, and illegal surveillance.’
The NGO has documented at least 36 cases of families of victims whose rights have been violated ‘for several months.’ But the number of relatives affected by these intimidations and silenced could be much higher. The protest movement that began in September has led to a bloody crackdown, with a death toll of over 500 according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR), which continues to document victims. Thousands of protesters have also been arrested, accused by the authorities of participating in ‘riots’ fomented by Western countries.
Approaching the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death, ‘families fear being subjected to the usual repressive methods to prevent them from organizing ceremonies,’ Amnesty International reports, calling on the international community to ‘support these families’ and to ‘put pressure on the Iranian authorities, privately and publicly,’ to respect their right to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.
The Iranian government, on the other hand, fears the emergence of new protests on the anniversaries of the deaths of these young victims, who have become the martyrs of this new generation of protesters, and whose faces have flooded social media for almost a year.”