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Families of 1988 massacre victims place flowers and photos at Khavaran, a site long known as the burial ground of the regime’s atrocities and fallen freedom fighters
Two-minute read
On August 21, 2025, in a deeply troubling front-page opinion piece in Etemad titled “Khavaran: A Challenge That Must Be Overcome,” Emadeddin Baghi—a former regime insider and columnist at the Kayhan daily—reshapes the narrative of the 1988 mass executions in Iran.
Baghi grotesquely reframes the planned and premeditated mass executions of political prisoners in 1988, falsely portraying them as regrettable but necessary actions taken after the National Liberation Army’s (NLA) Operation Eternal Light. However, prisoner and witness testimonies make clear that the massacre was prepared months in advance and had already begun before the NLA operation. Baghi selectively quotes Ayatollah Montazeri to imply that while he may have questioned secondary executions, he accepted the killing of “MEK operatives.” This deliberately omits Montazeri’s full condemnation of the massacre as “the greatest crime” of the clerical dictatorship. Any framing to the contrary is nothing more than propaganda and historical distortion.
Equally cynical is Baghi’s attempt to absolve the then-President Ali Khamenei, claiming Montazeri’s archived audio shows he was unaware of the executions and “tried to stop them.” This is an unauthenticated claim, absent verifiable evidence, that desperately tries to cleanse one of the regime’s central figures of direct involvement.
“We levelled Section 41 where PMOI members were buried & turned it into a parking lot”
🛑 The head of Behesht Zahra Cemetery admits Iran destroyed thousands of political prisoners’ graves. UN must act now to stop Iran from erasing evidence of atrocity crimes. #NoImpunity4Mullahs… pic.twitter.com/U3FfqKCzR3
— M. Hanif Jazayeri (@HanifJazayeri) August 21, 2025
Baghi supports the Tehran municipality’s decision to destroy the burial sites of executed prisoners—many of whom were secretly interred in Khavaran Cemetery, with no access given to families. He justifies turning these burial grounds into parks by citing urban development traditions and legal loopholes.
In reality, this is a strategy of erasure of collective memory, making state-sanctioned violence invisible and blocking any path toward truth or accountability.
Most revolting is Baghi’s exploitation of the victims’ families, the so-called Khavaran mothers—claiming they have recently condemned Israeli and American attacks—to argue that they should be “rewarded” with access to Khavaran as a supposed gesture of goodwill. By co-opting their grief, he weaponizes their pain into state propaganda, attempting to turn their suffering into a pseudo-nationalist symbol that perversely glorifies the very regime responsible for their loved ones’ murders.
This manipulation is not just cynical—it’s criminal. Baghi is turning the blood of victims into ammunition to feed his regime’s fabricated national unity.
Convicted #1988Massacre Perpetrator #HamidNoury Sparks Outrage with Provocative Cemetery Videohttps://t.co/ezI5T333Hp
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 26, 2025
This desperate attempt to rewrite history exposes far more than the regime intends. By erasing the graves, distorting Ayatollah Montazeri’s admission, and exploiting the grief of victims’ families, the clerical establishment is trying to sever the link between today’s nationwide grievances and the organized resistance that has challenged its authority for decades.
Yet these efforts only underscore the regime’s deepest fear: the enduring influence of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The 1988 massacre was designed to eliminate the PMOI and bury their ideals along with their bodies. But as Iran faces unprecedented economic collapse, mass protests over basic necessities, and widening cracks at the top of power, the same ideals are resurfacing in the streets.
The regime knows that the memory of those massacred—and the movement they represented—still haunts it, fueling the rising calls for justice and freedom. It is precisely this explosive convergence of social unrest and organized opposition that terrifies Tehran’s rulers and drives their relentless campaign to erase their bloody past.