IranWire:

Plans are underway to destroy a section of Tehran’s main cemetery that is host to the graves of many political prisoners who were executed in the early 1980s, IranWire has learned.

The management of Tehran’s “Heaven of Zahra” cemetery has told the families of those buried in Section 41 of the graveyard that the area will be bulldozed and paved over, according to one of the relatives, who spoke to IranWire on condition of anonymity.

Section 41 has been badly neglected on purpose, and is already full of broken and destroyed gravestones. The area had been a burial place for people from a range of backgrounds, although they all shared something in common: They were all executed in the early years of the Islamic Republic. Among those buried in Section 41 were supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK), who were mostly in their late teens or early twenties at the time, and Baha’is executed for observing their peaceful faith. One of the best known people buried in Section 41 is Sakine Ghasemi, popularly known as Pari the Tall, a prostitute who was executed in 1979 along with some of her associates. Two well-known Marxist figures, Taghi Shahram and Saeed Soltanpour, used to be buried here, but were later transferred to the Khavaran cemetery in eastern Tehran. Kharavan later became host to the remains of thousands killed during the mass executions in 1988.

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