Emancipation of the oppressed starts with the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy.
The Islamic Republic does not only silence and oppress. It has carried out wholesale massacres of the left. We are a global collective of leftists who say so plainly.
Khavaran cemetery, southeast of TehranPortraits of the executed, set among flowers at the graves.
Khavaran cemetery, southeast of TehranFramed portraits and flowers on the ground.
Khavaran cemetery, southeast of TehranFamilies and supporters gather around the graves.
Khavaran cemetery, southeast of TehranWomen carry framed portraits of the executed.
Two examples of the regime’s war on the left
Political prisoners executed in the 1980s. Source: Amnesty International, as marked on the image.
Khavaran خاوران
Through the 1980s the Islamic Republic executed thousands of political prisoners. Leftists, among them members of the Tudeh Party, the Fedaian, Rah-e Kargar and Komala, were buried from 1981 in unmarked mass graves at Khavaran, southeast of Tehran. In 1988 alone, Amnesty International says, at least 5,000 political prisoners were killed, hundreds of them leftists and Kurdish activists.
The state has never published a death toll. Bulldozers went through the graves in 2009, and in 2022 walls and cameras went up around the site. Families still gather there every year.
Mansour Osanloo, from a Free Osanloo campaign image.
Mansour Osanloo
Osanloo led the independent union of Tehran’s bus workers. On 9 May 2005, as the union held its founding meeting, men from government-controlled labour bodies attacked it with knives. Osanloo’s neck and tongue were cut and needed stitches. Security forces present did not intervene, and the international union federation ICFTU says state agents filmed the attack.
It was Osanloo, not his attackers, who went to prison. In 2007 he was sentenced to five years for “acting against national security” and “propaganda against the state.”
