Friday, 30 January 2026
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In Iran, funerals are the new battleground

Just when you think Iranian authorities couldn’t get crueller, you hear this: they’re extorting families out of huge sums of money in exchange for the bodies of murdered loved ones. Under the so-called “bullet price” – a practice dating back to the 1980s – the authorities have not only exacted money from grieving relatives they have ordered them to hold subdued funerals and even denounce the dead. The family of Ali Taherkhani ([link removed]) , a 31-year-old first shot and then clubbed by security forces, was made to pay the equivalent of $21,000 for his body. At his burial, condolence banners were prohibited and only four family members were allowed to attend against an entourage of armed security forces. Arina Moradi, who works for rights group Hengaw, said ([link removed]) her family had to pay to retrieve her
cousin’s body. Authorities also demanded Siavash Shirzad was buried in a remote ancestral village and that the burial took place in silence. In another case, the family of brothers Hamid and Vahid Arzanlou, two well-known entrepreneurs in Iran’s furniture industry, was made to pay more than one billion tomans (about $6,670).

This isn’t just cruelty for cruelty’s sake. The authorities want to make sure that the funerals don’t turn into protests, as has already happened at the funerals of well-known figures who’ve been killed, such as 21-year-old basketball player Ahmad Khosravani. Hundreds shouted protest slogans at the Behesht Zahra Cemetery in central Tehran when Khosravani was laid to rest.

But calls against the Ayatollah aren’t the only way people are voicing dissent. Once the extortion was paid for the bodies of the Arzanlou brothers, a third brother asked ([link removed]) mourners to applaud if they believed the pair had been right in protesting. The mourners did just that. This more celebratory response has occurred elsewhere. Instead of sombre music and Islamic verse, as is typical at most Iranian funerals today, some are choosing upbeat music and dancing. The relatives and close friends of Mohammad-Hossein Jamshidi and Ali Faraji ([link removed]) threw confetti and clapped. Women danced as participants re-enacted tabaq-keshi, a traditional ceremony performed at weddings, at the burial of 18-year-old student Sourena Golgoon ([link removed]) .

It’s hard to hold onto hope right now given the bloodbath that has just occurred. But if the slaughter of protesters is done to serve two purposes – silence the actual protesters and scare off would-be ones – these defiant funerals suggest Iranian authorities have not entirely succeeded in the latter.

Another protester, Mojtaba Shahpari, who was taken to hospital with a leg wound, to later be found shot in the head, had requested ([link removed]) to be wrapped in a lion and sun flag if he was killed. That’s the former state flag of Iran from 1907 to 1979, which is banned in the country today. Shahpari was buried in it.

Jemimah Steinfeld

CEO, Index on Censorship


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As all of this is happening, users of social media app TikTok ([link removed]) have claimed that the app, under new US ownership that includes billionaire Trump backer Larry Ellison, has been stifling content critical of ICE and the Trump government. TikTok rejects this claim ([link removed]) however, telling the BBC: “The US user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content."

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** Flashback
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Margaret Atwood, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Thurston Moore and Sir Trevor Phillips recite a poem for Andrei Aliaksandrau ([link removed])

This week, journalist and former Index colleague Andrei Aliaksandrau spent yet another birthday behind bars in Belarus, imprisoned for peacefully demanding democracy. He was detained in January 2021 “on suspicion of financing protest activities”. After nearly two years in pre-trial detention, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for charges that include high treason.

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The poem was translated into English by Belarusian poet Hanna Komar and John Farndon. Watch the video here ([link removed]) .


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The world is becoming more authoritarian and our work calling out human rights abuses and promoting freedom of expression in countries such as Iran, Pakistan and Belarus has never been more important.

By supporting Index on Censorship today, you can help us in our work with censored artists, jailed musicians, journalists under threat and dissidents facing torture or worse.

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Photo by: (A woman mourns at a funeral in Iran) Vahid Salemi/Alamy

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