‘They made us say he was a martyr’: families at Iran’s largest cemetery mourn those killed in the January protests

Sepehr

Family members gather to mourn Sepehr, who was 25 when he was killed in the January protests

Sepehr, 25, was shot and killed during January’s mass street protests. His father became widely known because of a video he recorded on his phone in their home city of Kahrizak, close to the capital, Tehran. In the video, his father kept repeating: “Sepehr-e Baba, where are you?” It is an intimate Persian form of address, something close to “my Sepehr, my child”.Sepehr became known by that cry, and the same words are now written on his gravestone: “Sepehr-e Baba, where are you?”Today, there is a crowd around Sepehr’s grave. People arrive, speak, stand for a while and then leave. The mother of a 16-year-old boy killed during the nationwide women’s rights protests in 2022 is there.Sepehr’s father says he does not fear arrest and speaks with a courage that seems to come from the place where grief has hardened into something else. He gestures to the people gathered around him and tells them they are free to film and take pictures as they like.“I’m waiting for these people to fall,” he says. “Don’t doubt it – they’re already gone. This regime will not go back to what it was before [January’s crackdown on protesters]. I’m telling all of you this.”Mohammadreza