In the early 1980s, the Islamic Republic of Iran committed one of the most horrific and large-scale atrocities in the country’s modern history by executing thousands of its political opponents in prisons across Iran. A few years later, in the summer of 1988, Ruhollah Khomeini issued an order to execute political prisoners who had survived the earlier wave of killings. Special committees were formed to carry out this massacre. Prison doors were closed, and all contact between inmates and the outside world was cut. Thousands of political prisoners were secretly executed without any form of legal procedures, and their bodies were buried in unmarked mass graves.
The 1988 massacre of political prisoners brought the crimes of the Islamic Republic in the 1980s into the category of crimes against humanity. Political prisoners and the families of the victims of the 1980s established the Iran Tribunal – a people’s court – where, through a legal process involving international judges and jurists, the Islamic Republic was tried and condemned for crimes against humanity under international law.
The Islamic Republic did not limit its crimes to the 1980s. Anyone who dares to speak out is imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Protesters and freedom-seekers involved in social movements – such as in December 2017, November 2019, and during the 2022 revolutionary uprising of Woman, Life, Freedom – have been brutally gunned down in the streets. Youth have been abducted, imprisoned, and executed at dawn, defenseless and alone, in an attempt to instill fear in society. This regime, with its bloodstained hands, is unchangeable – and if it remains in power, it will kill again. Its prisons are full of political prisoners whose lives are at risk. From within the ruling establishment, some voices are openly calling for a repeat of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners.
Today’s realities more clearly than ever demonstrate that the Islamic Republic must not be allowed to survive. Its continued rule means further despotism, repression, imprisonment, torture, executions, and devastating poverty. Now, by accusing individuals of espionage, it seeks to cover up its warmongering and incompetence in defending the country by creating another bloodbath behind prison walls. Only the people of Iran have the responsibility to liberate themselves and their society from this inhumane and catastrophic condition, and to consign the Islamic Republic – in all its factions and forms – to the dustbin of history.
The Association of Iranian Political Prisoners (in Exile), in its 32nd gathering on the massacre of political prisoners, to be held on 6 September 2025 at Husby Träff in Stockholm, commemorates the women and men who lost their lives in the 1980s and in the decades that followed, in the struggle for freedom and against the oppression and tyranny of the Islamic Republic.
The programme will feature speeches by Shahrzad Mojab, Nasser Mohajer, and Chowra Makaremi, and musical performances by Fozieh Plassehzadeh and Milad Azadpour.
Association of Iranian Political Prisoners (in Exile)
31 July 2025 / 9 Mordad 1404