Amnesty International accused Iranian authorities on Friday of “destroying vital evidence” of crimes against humanity by converting a section of Tehran’s main cemetery containing graves of executed dissidents into a parking lot.
“This is another grim reminder of systemic impunity for the mass executions of the 1980s,” Amnesty Iran said on X, adding that the graves in Lot 41 of Behesht-e Zahra cemetery were being bulldozed with official permission.
“By destroying them, authorities are concealing evidence of their crimes and hampering the rights to truth, justice and reparations.”
Tehran’s deputy mayor Davoud Goudarzi admitted last week that the plot had been cleared to provide parking for visitors to nearby graves, saying permission was granted by provincial authorities.
Lot 41 contains the remains of members of opposition groups, including the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK), as well as Baha’is and others executed in the early years after the 1979 revolution.
Rights groups and families of the victims say the site is a crime scene that requires forensic preservation.
“Destruction of these graves is a serious human rights violation as it hinders future investigations into the mass executions carried out by the Islamic Republic,” Shahin Milani of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center told Iran International this week.
Lot 41, long known as the “section of the executed” or “curse-land,” has been under tight surveillance for decades.
Authorities have previously destroyed or desecrated headstones of victims from the 1980s and of more recent unrest, including the 2022 protests.
Amnesty renewed its call for Iran to “stop the destruction and desecration of graves” and to respect families’ rights to bury their loved ones with dignity.
Milani told Eye for Iran podcast that Iranian women are at the heart of today’s opposition.
“The Iranian woman who decides to walk in the streets of Tehran, Shiraz, Bandar Abbas, without a veil… that’s the most potent opposition to this regime,” he said.
Despite intensified crackdowns, women continue to defy compulsory hijab laws.
Public opinion surveys point in the same direction. A poll conducted last summer involving more than 77,000 people found that a majority reject the Islamic Republic and favor either regime change or a structural transition.
Milani said the most authentic expressions of opposition are found in cultural acts, not exile politics.
“It is the manifesto of the future of Iran,” he said.
Milani highlighted a recent production at Stanford University by acclaimed playwright Bahram Beyzaie, a reinterpretation of the revolution through the eyes of women. The play drew widespread interest inside Iran, with audiences requesting online access, while receiving little notice outside.
Awakening from a 'nightmare'
“Iranians have woken up from this nightmare,” Milani said referring to the Islamic Republic, “but now they need to get rid of the source of this nightmare, which is dogmatism, which is religious domination, which is velayat-e faqih. (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist)"
Milani’s remarks come as Iran faces one of its harshest crackdowns in decades. Rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been executed in the past year, many in public.
In Isfahan, authorities have begun ordering the confiscation of Baha’i homes and assets — a move the community’s representatives described to Iran International as “economic strangulation.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of labor activist Sharifeh Mohammadi, and women’s rights defender Hasti Amiri has been sentenced to three years in prison after protesting executions and appearing unveiled in public.
The long shadow of 1953
Milani argues that Iranians have too often been trapped in emotional narratives of the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA and the 1979 Islamic Revolution, casting the monarchy and the Islamic Republic in black-and-white terms.
"The Shah was, at worst, an authoritarian leader. At best, he was a modernizer,” Milani said. “This regime, at best, is a pseudo-totalitarian regime. And at worst, totalitarian.”
The difference, Milani said, is that while the monarchy did not attempt to reshape private lives, the Islamic Republic has tried to engineer a “new man and woman,” reducing women to second-class citizens and criminalizing dissent.
Milani argued that younger Iranians are less interested in “black and white” narratives about 1953 that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh, and more focused on freedom, equality, and dignity in their daily lives.
The Islamic Republic has long invoked the 1953 coup to justify hostility toward the United States, while downplaying the fact that Mosaddegh’s supporters were outlawed after 1979.
In 2023, the CIA for the first time described its role in ousting Mosaddegh as “undemocratic.” Yet Milani says the coup cannot be reduced to CIA intrigue alone, arguing that Iran’s clergy were decisive in turning against Mosaddegh.
Iran's future in people's hands
Seven decades on, he believes the lesson is clear: Iran’s future will not be decided by nostalgia or in-exile politics but by the resilience of ordinary citizens.
“The future of Iran,” Milani said, “is in the hands of those women, those teachers, those citizens who refuse to live by this ideology. They are the opposition to this regime.”
“Iranian society is more represented by intellectuals who used to be religious and now go and kiss the feet of a Baha’i and say, I’m sorry for everything we have done to you,” he added. “That’s the future of Iran. Those women are the future of Iran. They are the opposition to this regime.”
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