Trucks without license plates and unregistered graves: the Iranian regime makes bodies disappear

BeirutTrucks without license plates unload bodies at night. Cemeteries receive orders to open unregistered graves. Families sign confidentiality agreements to recover their children. This is how doctors, morgue employees, and funeral workers describe the system that, according to multiple investigations, has accompanied the repression of protests in Iran in early JanuaryThe emerging figure, more than 30,000 dead in just a few days, would make this episode the worst massacre since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The regime denies it, but the evidence is mounting.

The protests, which began in late December due to the economic downturn, soon transformed into a movement against the Islamic Republic's establishment. January 8 and 9 marked the peak of the mobilization, with massive demonstrations in Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and dozens of other cities. Human rights organizations maintain that security forces responded by firing directly at the protesters. The protests have subsided for now. But the debate centers on how many died and where their bodies are.

The Guardian The online news outlet has published an investigation based on eyewitness accounts from healthcare workers describing overcrowded hospitals and bodies being removed by security forces before official registration. Iran InternationalThe organization, based outside the country, claims that internal documents raise the figure to more than 36,500 deaths between January 8 and 9 alone. Reuters The agency has collected reports from United Nations experts about wounded people being detained in hospitals and pressure being put on families to retrieve bodies under conditions of secrecy. AP It notes that independent verification has been hampered by a near-total internet blackout for three weeks.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an organization with an extensive network of sources inside Iran, claims to have confirmed 6,126 deaths, including 5,777 protesters, 86 children, 214 members of the security forces, and 49 bystanders. However, it adds that it is still investigating another 17,091 possible deaths that have not yet been verified. HRANA also puts the number of arrests since the start of the protests at 41,880 and denounces a "continuous wave of arrests, intimidation, and control of the public narrative." The organization accuses security forces of raiding hospitals to locate and arrest the wounded, raising further concerns about access to medical care. Another NGO, Iran Human RightsA Norway-based organization documents at least 3,428 protester deaths and warns that the final toll could reach 25,000.

In response to these figures, Iranian authorities have published their first official death toll of 3,117, the majority—according to them—being members of the security forces and civilians killed by "rioters." The government accuses foreign media of fabricating figures to justify an international campaign against Iran. The discrepancy between the two versions is enormous, and without independent observers, the casualty figures have become politicized.

Names that cannot be pronounced

Witnesses who manage to leave the country describe the same pattern: bodies removed without documentation, nighttime burials without identification, death certificates without detailed cause of death, and explicit warnings to family members not to speak to journalists. In some cases, payments were allegedly demanded to recover the bodies. Iranian activists in exile denounce that the ayatollahs' regime is preventing the victims from becoming a collective symbol. Without names, there is no shared memory.

The practice is not new. In 1988, thousands of political prisoners were executed and buried in mass graves whose location remains uncertain. That massacre was never investigated. Today, human rights defenders point to a similar pattern: making bodies disappear to erase the evidence. The difference is that now there are leaked videos, lists of names, and documents circulating outside of Tehran's control. The repression is no longer confined to the streets; it is also being waged in the realm of information.

For families, the uncertainty is the most prolonged punishment. They receive no official confirmation, only administrative silence. Parents who go from hospital to hospital and police station without answers. Mothers who receive a call indicating where to collect a body on the condition that they do not organize public funerals.

The international response has, so far, been cautious. The United Nations has called for independent access to investigate. The EU is debating new sanctions against security officials. Washington has hardened its rhetoric, calling the reports "credible and extremely serious." The crisis is superimposed on an already tense context between the United States and Iran due to the stalled nuclear agreement and direct or indirect confrontations in the regionThe scale of the repression could translate into increased diplomatic pressure or the use of force in the coming months. Tehran, for its part, warns that any external intervention will be met with a response "on all fronts." In Iran, the struggle is no longer just for the streets that have fallen silent today. It is for the names that still cannot be spoken.