خاوران

What it is

خاوران (Khâvarân) is a parcel of arid land in the southeast of Tehran, just outside the city’s outer ring road, historically used as a burial ground for Baha’is and other religious minorities denied burial in Islamic cemeteries. From the early 1980s the Islamic Republic began burying executed political prisoners there in mass unmarked pits. After the 1988 prison massacre, when several thousand jailed leftists and members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq were executed in secret across Iran, a substantial portion of the Tehran-area dead were trucked to Khavaran and dumped in trenches.

What happened

For years, families of the disappeared learned of Khavaran by following IRGC trucks at night, by overhearing morgue workers, and by following the smell. The Islamic Republic has never officially acknowledged Khavaran as a state burial site. Families who attempted to mark graves with stones, photographs, or names were repeatedly arrested. On 9 January 2009 (during the run-up to the Green Movement) and again in 2017, the authorities bulldozed sections of the site, smashing the makeshift markers families had assembled and disturbing remains. The 2008-2009 bulldozing destroyed evidence relevant to the 1988 massacre case before the UN. Iran Tribunal, an independent civil-society tribunal that held hearings in London and The Hague in 2012, accepted Khavaran-area exhumation testimony as part of its case file.

What followed

Despite continuing harassment, families gather at Khavaran each year on the anniversary weeks of the 1988 executions (late August to early September) and on Persian-calendar memorial dates. Photos taken during these gatherings (mothers in their 70s and 80s, holding portraits, sitting in dust) circulate widely in diaspora media. The site remains technically off-limits but has been documented in multiple Amnesty reports, in the 2017 “Blood-Soaked Secrets” Amnesty report, and in submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran.

How it’s remembered

Khavaran is the symbolic counter-memorial of the Islamic Republic. Where the state has Behesht-e Zahra cemetery for its martyrs, families of the executed have Khavaran for theirs. The phrase پروندهٔ خاوران (parvande-ye Khâvarân, “the Khavaran file”) is now diaspora shorthand for the unfinished accountability dossier of the 1980s political executions. Diaspora artists from Shirin Neshat to graphic designers in Berlin have used Khavaran imagery as a recurring motif. Inside Iran, mention of the site in domestic press remains a red line; reformist outlets occasionally publish veiled references.

Cross-links

See koshtâr-67 (1988 prison massacre), Evin Prison, sepâh (IRGC), dâdgâh-e enqelâb, âbân-98.

Sources

• Amnesty International (Dec 2018): “Blood-Soaked Secrets: Why Iran’s 1988 prison massacres are ongoing crimes against humanity”
• Iran Tribunal (2012): findings of the People’s Tribunal on Iran, The Hague
• UN Special Rapporteur reports (Asma Jahangir, Javaid Rehman) on the 1980s executions and Khavaran site
• Justice for Iran: 2010 Khavaran exhumation testimonies
• Center for Human Rights in Iran: ongoing reporting on family harassment

References

• Dehkhoda Lexicon
• Amnesty: Blood-Soaked Secrets (2018)
• Iran Tribunal proceedings
• Justice for Iran
• CHRI: 2017 bulldozing report