Uncovering the 1981 Massacre in Iran - Shahin Nasiri

26 June 2023, University of Amsterdam (UvA)
- June 2023 marks the 42nd anniversary of the 1981 massacre in Iran, the most extensive massacre in its recent history. Only two years after the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime executed thousands of its political dissidents within a few months. For about 40 years, however, there was very little known about the extent and scope of this mass atrocity. The Iranian authorities have systematically and deliberately tried to cover up historical traces relating to this massacre by the destruction of (mass) graves of political dissidents, distortion of historical data, and active harassment of survivors and family members of the victims.
In the past few years, a group of scholars and investigative journalists formed a research collective (Rastyad Collective) and studied this highly neglected massacre. After years of archival and field research under challenging circumstances, Rastyad Collective succeeded in creating an online database which covers the identities of more than 3500 victims in 85 cities (including hundreds of minors) and grave locations of hundreds of dissidents in the city of Tehran.
In this conference, the speakers discussed the historical, legal, and political significance of the 1981 Massacre and reflect on the results of this research project.
About the speaker:
Shahin Nasiri is a lecturer in applied ethics and philosophy of science at the Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and the spokesperson of Rastyad Collective. His areas of interest include political theory, theories of freedom, phenomenology, critical theory, migration and citizenship, and genealogy of resistance movements. He is the (co)-author of Investigating the 1981 Massacre: On the Law-Constituting Force of Violence (2022), The Repressed Voices of the Iranian Revolution (2020), and the book project Decolonising Political Concepts (Routledge, forthcoming).
Organizers:
- University of Amsterdam (UvA)
- NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- Rastyad Collective