In the summer of 1988, behind prison walls across Iran, thousands of political prisoners were summoned, asked a few questions about their political beliefs, and sent to the gallows. Within a few weeks, at least 30,000 people – most of them affiliated with the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) – were executed.
The Iranian regime – new massacre, old lessons
The world looked away. Despite urgent appeals, nothing was done, and to this day the massacre has not been officially recognised by the UN and the regime has yet to be held to account. The Mullahs learned that mass killings could be carried out with impunity.
Today, 37 years later, that lesson is being put into practice again – and the signals from Tehran could not be clearer.
On 6 August, the Iranian regime executed 16 prisoners in a single day. That brought the total number of executions over the previous two weeks to 93 – a 127% increase compared to the same period last year.
Only two days later came another chilling development. During the transfer of prisoners from the Greater Tehran prison to Evin, five political prisoners – Vahid Bani-Amerian, Pouya Ghobadi, Akbar (Shahrokh) Daneshvarkar, Mohammad Taghavi, and Babak Alipour – were abruptly separated from other inmates and transferred to Ghezel Hesar Prison, notorious as the prison where executions are carried out. They were sentenced to execution in December 2024, on charges of alleged affiliation with the PMOI/MEK and “enmity with God” – charges historically used to justify killing dissidents en masse.
Simultaneously the regime has increased its extensive arrests of former political prisoners and their families. In the most recent such arrest, security agents raided the home of Fatemeh Ziaei Azad, a 68-year-old former political prisoner suffering from advanced multiple sclerosis. They arrested her for the seventh time, seizing her personal belongings, despite her obvious ill-health. Fatemeh was first arrested at the age of 24. She has spent 13 years in prison and is one of the sole survivors of the notorious ‘residential units’ created in the 1980s to break female political prisoners in Ghezel Hesar prison.
For those who lived through the 1988 massacre – or who have studied it – the pattern is unmistakeable. First comes the propaganda, then the quiet legal manoeuvres, then the increase in sentences of execution, and finally, the transfers: pulling prisoners out of general wards and moving them to execution facilities.
In recent months, regime-affiliated media such as Fars New Agency, Aftabnews, Hamshahri Online and Ghatreh have openly called for a “repeat” of 1988, praising the slaughter as a “historic necessity”.
Iran’s violence abroad
Some in Britain may be tempted to see this as a distant tragedy, another grim headline from a troubled region. But Iran’s human rights crisis is inseparable from its foreign policy – and from our own security.
The same regime that hangs dissidents in Ghezel Hesar is arming Russia’s war in Ukraine, supplying missiles to proxy militias across the Middle East, and, as the foiled bomb plot against an opposition rally in Paris showed in 2018, is willing to carry out terrorist operations on European soil. Its brutality at home fuels its aggression abroad.
When we ignore atrocities in Iran, we are not buying peace – we are underwriting instability.
The need for immediate action
But there is still time to act. The fate of the five political prisoners transferred on 8 August along with dozens of others on death row is not yet sealed. Fatemeh Ziaei and others arrested in recent weeks can still be freed. But time is running out. Britain, alongside European allies, must call for the immediate halt of these executions and the release of political prisoners.
We must end impunity: it is high time for the formation of a UN investigative mechanism to hold Iran accountable for the 1988 massacre, because impunity only emboldens the regime and serves as a green light for further killings.
And each one of us can stand by the families of these brave prisoners by keeping the names and faces of those at risk in the public eye, denying the regime the cover of silence.
In 1988, the bodies were buried in unmarked mass graves and the true realities of that chilling summer were buried with them. It took decades for the scale of the atrocity to emerge. Today, one of the sole survivors of the 1988 massacre is among the five transferred and at imminent risk of execution. Let’s make sure we don’t allow history to repeat itself.
Now, in 2025, the warning signs are in plain sight. The machinery of mass execution is moving into position. The world’s response – or lack of it – will be judged. If we believe in the universality of human rights, and value the sanctity of life and the rule of law, then it is time to speak loudly, clearly, and through our actions. Because if we fail now, the next generation will look back at 2025 the way we look back at 1988: as the year the world looked away.
