{"id":536689,"date":"2026-07-11T18:31:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/536689\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T18:31:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:31:14","slug":"they-made-us-say-he-was-a-martyr-families-at-irans-largest-cemetery-mourn-those-killed-in-the-january-protests-global-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/536689\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They made us say he was a martyr\u2019: families at Iran\u2019s largest cemetery mourn those killed in the January protests | Global development"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sepehr, 25, was shot and killed during January\u2019s mass street protests<\/a>. His father became widely known because of a video he recorded on his phone in their home city of Kahrizak, close to the capital, Tehran. In the video, his father kept repeating: \u201cSepehr-e Baba, where are you?\u201d It is an intimate Persian form of address, something close to \u201cmy Sepehr, my child\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sepehr became known by that cry, and the same words are now written on his gravestone: \u201cSepehr-e Baba, where are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, there is a crowd around Sepehr\u2019s grave. People arrive, speak, stand for a while and then leave. The mother of a 16-year-old boy killed during the nationwide women\u2019s rights protests in 2022 is there.<\/p>\n

Sepehr\u2019s father says he does not fear arrest and speaks with a courage that seems to come from the place where grief has hardened into something else. He gestures to the people gathered around him and tells them they are free to film and take pictures as they like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m waiting for these people to fall,\u201d he says. \u201cDon\u2019t doubt it \u2013 they\u2019re already gone. This regime will not go back to what it was before [January\u2019s crackdown on protesters]. I\u2019m telling all of you this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohammadreza was 38 when he was killed in Tehransar, an area in western Tehran. At his grave are his sister, with long curly hair, and his elderly mother, who wears a pale blue headscarf. \u201cMy child had a hard life,\u201d she says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t have a good life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI cursed [Ali] Khamenei,\u201d says his mother. \u201cI was very happy when they [US\/Israel] killed him<\/a>. But my heart aches for these children of ours. I wish they had been here, too; they had dreamed of seeing Khamenei gone. There is so much longing in it. I miss my son. We have to endure.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markAt his funeral, people said: \u2018He saved our lives that night.\u2019 He was very kind. He had so much loyalty and honour<\/p>\n

Mohammadreza\u2019s sister says his wife now sleeps hugging her dead husband\u2019s pillow, while his son comes and kisses his father\u2019s grave and cries.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother saved a lot of people the night [he was killed]. He brought everyone into the parking garage. At his funeral, people said: \u2018He saved our lives that night.\u2019 He was very kind. He had so much loyalty and honour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to write javidnam [Farsi for \u2018everlasting name\u2019 and adopted by families to remember those killed in protests<\/a>] on my brother\u2019s gravestone, but we were afraid because they [Iranian police] have broken some of the stones. I\u2019m waiting for a little time to pass, for the atmosphere to calm down. Then I\u2019ll write javidnam on his stone. God willing, by next Nowruz [Iranian new year in March 2027] these pieces of shit will be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a distance, Mohammadreza\u2019s sister points out Sara\u2019s grave. Sara was 45 when she was killed during the January protests. A CCTV video of the moment she was attacked in the street by plainclothes security forces carrying machetes went viral on social media: her terrified gaze, alone, empty-handed, under the kicks of a plainclothes man with a blade.<\/p>\n

No one is at her grave today. She has a large white gravestone, and in front of her name, in parentheses, is the word darya (Farsi for \u201csea\u201d), which families use to represent eternity.<\/p>\n

Nearby, another woman sits at the grave of her own javidnam. \u201cThey killed my cousin [in the protests] and this one [pointing to the grave] a day later. We found my cousin after four days, but we couldn\u2019t find this one. My cousin was killed with bullets; this one with a knife.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish they had seen Khamenei\u2019s death. Let those bastards go to hell. They will be finished in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohammad, 28, was killed in Ariya Shahr, in north-west Tehran. Today, his father and young brother are at his grave. They are from the poorer neighbourhoods of the capital. His brother is washing the stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had grabbed two girls and were dragging them,\u201d says his brother. \u201cHe went to save the girls, and those bastards hit him instead. He was a boxer. His friends who were with him told us what happened. Four or five Basijis [the Basij is a volunteer paramilitary branch of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] had surrounded two girls. My brother and his friends beat the Basijis and helped the girls escape.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then the Basijis surrounded them on motorbikes. They beat them until finally one of them shot my brother in the side. He fell and said, \u2018I\u2019m burning, I\u2019m burning.\u2019 Then one of them came over and shot him in the head and heart, too. Three times in total.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali was shot dead in Moshiriyeh, south Tehran, during the protests. The mourner at his graveside says: \u2018My friend is under the ground and I\u2019m alive\u2019<\/p>\n

Ali was killed by a bullet in Moshiriyeh, south Tehran, and still has no gravestone. The last time I was here, I saw a young man sitting alone at his grave in the dusk, crying, playing a sad pop song on his phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey killed my friend in Moshiriyeh. They arrested me, too, but for some reason they released me, and I wish they hadn\u2019t. Since that day my life has gone black. My friend is under the ground and I\u2019m alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Ali\u2019s whole family is at his grave. His father is middle-aged, thin, with sunburnt skin and a very calm face. Several of his teeth are missing. He thanks everyone who comes. Money is short in Ali\u2019s family and buying a gravestone will be difficult for them.<\/p>\n

Ali\u2019s father says: \u201cMy son was a footballer. He was 2 metres tall. A goalkeeper. We went to Kahrizak and identified him there. After everything happened on Thursday, we had no news of him until two or three in the afternoon on Friday. Then we went looking for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali\u2019s younger sister stands beside her father. He points to her and says: \u201cHis sister suffered so much. She was so attached to him.\u201d His mother wears a long black manto (coat) and has a gentle, kind face. She does not speak. She only gives me a soft smile and thanks me for coming to her son\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

Danyal\u2019s father is sitting on a chair. His mother and aunt sit beside the grave. His father says: \u201cThese people \u2013 the Islamic Republic\u2019s units \u2013 have no religion, no faith, no mercy, no decency. One of them was saying they should open fire on the opposing people with machine guns. Their brains have been washed like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Islamic Republic has done something to them, to the regime loyalists and supporters, so that they think anyone who says anything against the system should be lined up against a wall and shot. They come with that way of thinking and kill everyone. They killed my son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danyal\u2019s father says he has two sons, Danyal and Nima. Nima works in music. Danyal, his father says, was among the first people to be shot and killed in Fardis, west of Tehran. \u201cWe opened the body bags one by one, searching through the bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point I lost hope. I said: \u2018That\u2019s enough, leave it.\u2019\u201d Here, Danyal\u2019s father begins to weep. \u201cAfter days of searching, we found him and put him in the morgue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family says the mortuaries were full of bodies, with women and men screaming as they searched for loved ones, opening zipped-up bags one by one. Danyal\u2019s aunt says: \u201cMy other brother said there was a girl whose body bag had been left open and she was naked. I said: \u2018God damn you. You killed so many people over a few strands of hair, and now you\u2019ve left her here like this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Danyal\u2019s father says the Iranian security forces put pressure on him to declare his son a martyr. \u201cThey said we had to write \u2018martyr of a terrorist attack\u2019. I said to myself, because of this other child [his other son, Nima], we have to accept whatever they said. Later, when things calm down, we\u2019ll change it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sepehr, 25, was shot and killed during January\u2019s mass street protests. His father became widely known because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-536689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}