As preparations begin in Iran for the festivities marking the Islamic republic’s 30 year anniversary, another somber Iranian anniversary is commemorated. Twenty years ago, some 10,000 political prisoners and regime opponents were brutally killed following a fatwa from then supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The executed, some as young as 15 or 16 years old, were buried in mass graves. Many of the political prisoners were affiliated with radical left-wing groups and the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (aka People’s Mujahedin of Iran). Some of the prisoners were only a few weeks away from finishing their sentences and regaining their freedom when Khomeini gave his fatwa.

This year, the families’ twenty-year-old wound was repopened. To celebrate the start of its fourth decade, the Islamic republic decided that it is time to erase its bloody past. Government bulldozers razed the mass grave of Khavaran, where the majority of the massacred prisoners were buried and where families had placed make-shift memorials for their loved ones. Reportedly some trees were planted over the site.