For decades, the grieving relatives of thousands of political prisoners and regime opponents who were killed in the late 1980s were denied access to their unmarked graves at Tehran's Khavaran cemetery.
Now, as the current authorities try to keep the lid on the war crimes that took place during the massacre, they are erecting barriers in an apparent effort to ensure no respect is paid to the victims.
Videos and images published on social media in the past week show that a high concrete wall and towering security-camera fixtures have been installed around the perimeter of the cemetery, known by many Iranians as the "place of the damned."
The cemetery in the east of the capital was traditionally a final resting place for members of religious minorities, who were interred there to keep them separate from the graves of Muslims. But following the mass executions of political prisoners and other accused opponents of the Islamic republic's clerical regime beginning in 1988, Khavaran became best known as a secret burial ground for some of the thousands killed.
The graves at Khavaran are unmarked, and Tehran has for decades barred families of the dead from mourning there and punished those who brave the authorities by leaving flowers and mementos. The strict official stance has contributed to accusations that Tehran has attempted to cover up the killings of dissidents and religious minorities by death squads, and even desecrated the burial sites of victims.
Families and activists see the new installations as a brazen attempt by authorities to further restrict access to the Khavaran cemetery in their efforts to erase the memory of the dead.
A group representing families of those killed during the purge has expressed outrage over the construction at the Khavaran site, which it believes holds the remains of families' loved ones killed in 1988.
"We do not tolerate the regime's decision to put up a wall and install cameras to prevent the presence of families," the group said in a statement this week, according to RFE/RL's Radio Farda. "We urge the Islamic Republic of Iran to stop harassing the families of [those interred at Khavaran cemetery] as soon as possible and to answer our questions instead of threatening and intimidating us."
The group and other activists have tied the new construction to Iran's effort to deflect attention from the decades-old massacre, which is at the center of a high-profile case in a foreign court.
Hamid Nouri, a former deputy prosecutor who is charged with helping carry out more than 100 executions and human rights abuses that took place in Tehran's notorious Evin prison in 1988, is being tried in a Swedish court and a verdict is expected on July 14.
Nouri has been cast as a henchman for the judges who determined which prisoners would be executed in keeping with a fatwa issued by former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic. Khomeini's order, issued at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, initially targeted members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) accused of carrying out attacks on Iranian soil, but was expanded to include others found guilty of "mohareb," or waging war against God.
The rights watchdog Amnesty International estimates that around 4,500 people -- including members of the MKO, students, leftists, and other alleged opponents of the clerical regime -- were killed in the purge, although the MKO places the number at around 30,000.
Nouri's arrest in 2019 upon his arrival in Sweden for a vacation and his subsequent trial in Stockholm on charges of international war crimes and human rights abuses have been fiercely criticized by Iran.
The trial has implicated the involvement of high-ranking members of Iran's clerical establishment in the mass killings, including current President Ebrahim Raisi. That has led the UN special rapporteur on human rights to call for an independent inquiry into the massacre and Raisi's possible role.
In response to the trial, Tehran has officially demanded Nouri's release and accused the Swedish court of bias. Since arguments wrapped up in February, Tehran has been accused of trying to influence the outcome of the trial by threatening to execute a Swedish-Iranian researcher imprisoned in Iran on terrorism charges and through the arrests of other Swedish citizens.
Prosecutors in the Nouri trial reportedly requested to visit the Khavaran cemetery, which has been bulldozed multiple times over the past three decades. The request was denied.
In its statement this week, the group representing victims' families said that documents presented in Nouri's trial have provided evidence that "our loved ones are secretly buried in graves" such as those at Khavaran cemetery.
"Nearly 34 years have passed since the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988, during which the families of Khavaran have been repeatedly harassed and even detained, and in several cases the regime has attempted to destroy the cemetery," the group said. "They have been buried en masse and we do not know how, why, or even where they are buried."
The group vowed to launch an international campaign to protest against the new construction at the Khavaran cemetery and to call on the authorities in Iran to allow political diversity and respect human rights.