Former prisoners call for databank of 1980s victims

In the fourth seminar of this kind, the main theme was the need to bring those responsible for the massacre of political prisoners to justice, and to keep the memory of the victims alive

Shahrzad News: Dozens of former Iranian political prisoners, who together were incarcerated for over five hundred years, attended a three-day seminar in the Swedish city of Gutenberg last week. The meeting ended with a unanimous call for the creation of a data bank recording all those who were executed in such prisons during the 1980s.

Ahmad Mousavi was one of those who had spent many years behind bars. He told Shahrzad News: “We are dealing with a regime that is systematically trying to erode our nation’s collective memory of the crimes it committed against many political prisoners. In consequence today’s younger generation knows nothing about the executions.”

Lawyer and human rights activist Shadi Sadr said she knew nothing about the bloody purges in Iran’s political prisons during the 1980s, and only found out while attending a women’s conference in Sweden a few years ago.

Fariba, a student activist from Belgium, admitted that though she and many fellow students had been politicised by the reformist movement in Iran, their leaders told them nothing about the political executions.

Source: Shahrzad News