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Approximately 100 incarcerated Iranian trans people are missing, presumed dead, after an Israeli strike on the infamous Evin Prison. Authorities inside Iran, and political prisoners from inside the prison, are saying these missing individuals were killed in the bombardment.
Israeli officials and media have framed the attack on Evin as “symbolic”: Israel wanted to show Iranians that it supported their liberation by bombing the jail where many political prisoners are held. Instead, it has proven to us how absurd Israel’s promises to deliver freedom through bombs really are.
I grew up in Iran. When I first came out as trans, I used to believe the story that Israeli pinkwashing tells us: that Israel is a safe haven for LGBTQ peoples. It was easy to believe: rainbow flags, Tel Aviv Pride, all of it seemed so magical and fun. These narratives showed up on many Persian-language queer and feminist pages. And when you’re a queer person in Iran, terrified and trying to survive, you’re desperate for something, anything, that looks like hope.
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But then I learned what it’s really like to be queer under Israeli rule. What life is like for the millions of Palestinians who live under Israel’s control. I learned about how Israel blackmails queer Palestinians, threatening to out them to force them into spying. I learned how their bombs don’t check who’s queer before the Israeli military drops them on Gaza, how genocide doesn’t distinguish between straight and gay.
I learned that queer Israelis also suffer from a homophobic government that calls them a threat to the family and refuses to let them get married.
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I learned that queer Palestinians live under siege and occupation with no rainbow safety anywhere. It took me a short time to learn all of this, but looking back, it makes me see how powerful the Israeli pinkwashing campaign was that it could even affect those of us inside Iran.
And now I learn that 100 trans Iranians are gone, killed in a single strike.
I don’t know why those 100 trans people were incarcerated at Evin. Some may have been there because they were involved in political activism. Others may have been accused of public indecency due to their gender presentation, or sex work they engaged in for survival. Trans women are targeted disproportionately by these kinds of laws worldwide.
We don’t have many stories of those women in part because it seems their families haven’t wanted to talk about them.
The trans ward in Evin Prison has always been infamous for its cruelty. Trans prisoners are denied yard time, and there have been countless reports of sexual harassment by guards. It’s the only trans ward in Tehran and holds transfem prisoners.
I can’t stop thinking that I could have been in that prison.
In Iran, I was an activist. I organized secret gatherings for queer and trans people, hosted underground workshops about DIY hormones and safety, and helped friends navigate the brutal court process to get the paperwork they needed to survive. I crowdfunded for unhoused trans people when they had nowhere to go.
We had our own small network — group chats where we would warn each other about police presence in streets, share info about queer-friendly shops, or just send memes to keep ourselves going. We threw small underground parties, blasting all the queer bangers, drinking home-grown wine in paper cups, kissing in corners, sometimes sleeping around carelessly just to feel alive for a moment in a world that wanted us dead.
We helped each other with makeup in cramped bedrooms, snuck out to the mountains to breathe for a day without stares, and found moments of real joy even under a system trying to crush us. We built our lives, even knowing that any day, we could be taken away for it.
My activism and the small communities I made were deemed dangerous by the government. One day I received a phone call from an unknown number. The person on the other line knew almost everything I was doing. They told me I needed to stop, and that I would be better off if I left the country. They told me I was causing trouble and the state would only tolerate so much.
If I didn’t stop my activism and leave Iran, they said, they would arrest me.
The trans ward of Evin Prison could have been where I ended up. I could be dead now. But I chose the easy way out, and I left Iran. I will always feel guilty for that.
They were trans, and Iranian — imprisoned by one state, murdered by another, and abandoned by the world.
Now I throw queer club nights and build community here in Stockholm, Sweden, too — safe from police raids, safe from being arrested. It feels strange. I’m doing what I did back home, but without fear, and on a much bigger scale. It shouldn’t feel like betrayal to stay alive and build queer joy and community elsewhere. Yet when that trans ward was bombed, the guilt hit again. I left, and now they’re gone.
It’s a weird kind of survivor’s guilt. I’m here, breathing, trying to live my queer life, surrounded by a normal state of the world. I’m expected to work as if nothing has happened. I’m expected to throw my club nights as usual while I’m mourning, while they are gone.
Their families don’t claim them, terrified of the government, or too ashamed, or simply unable.
The government will never claim them. They are going to be faceless victims, at least for now.
So we can’t say their names. We can’t post their photos. But we can remember that they were here. They existed.
They were trans, and Iranian — imprisoned by one state, murdered by another, and abandoned by the world.
The Iranian state and its prisons are a nightmare, but Israel is not our savior. Their bombs do not liberate us. Their rainbow flags do not protect us. Their “queer rights” propaganda means nothing when they are killing queer people alongside everyone else.
If you ever bought into the “Israel loves queers” narrative, let this be the moment it cracks.
We deserve better than being used as rainbow shields for bombs. We deserve a world where queerness isn’t a tool for war, where trans Iranians can live free without fearing either the Islamic Republic’s prisons or Israeli airstrikes.
They are gone, but they mattered. And we will not forget them, even if we cannot say their names.
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