Victims

Victims of Iran’s 1988 Massacre

Gathering information about victims of execution and crimes against humanity is always a noble but daunting task. It is next to impossible to name all the victims of dictatorial regimes, as many political executions are carried out in secret. What has happened in Iran since the beginning of the 1980s is an example of such a reality.

Upwards of 120,000 people have been executed by the Iranian regime for political reasons. Most of the executions were carried out in secret, and the vast majority of the victims remain nameless to this day.

It is estimated that as many as 30,000 political prisoners, primarily affiliated to the opposition PMOI (MEK), were summarily executed during Iran’s 1988 massacre alone. Some sources have reported that the figure may have been as high as 34,000.

Various lists of thousands of the victims have already been published by a number of groups. As part of its effort to document the true scale of the tragedy, JVMI has embarked on an ongoing campaign to list the names and details of the victims. We hope to build up on what has already been published by various opposition groups and NGOs.

We encourage all families of the victims and anyone knowledgeable about specific cases of executions which have been omitted from our list to use our web form to submit any available information so that it could be investigated by our victims’ database team and updated on our list in due course.