This page is dedicated to 52 people from Esfarayen in the province of North Khorasan whose names appear with a source in our list. The list for Esfarayen is short and recent: its earliest date is 6 Aban 1402 and its latest 9 Mordad 1405. 24 of these names were killed in protests and 18 were executed. 9 people are at risk of the execution of a death sentence and 1 person was killed by government forces outside of protests.
Years and days
From each of the years 1402 and 1403 there is only one name on this page. Then comes the year 1404 with 41 names, and from the year 1405 so far 9 names have been recorded. One day casts its shadow over this page: 18 Dey 1404 with 19 names. The day 9 Mordad 1405 with 9 names comes after it, and the days 22 Mehr and 19 Dey 1404 have two names each.
The youngest person on this page was 16 years old and the oldest 54, and the median of the ages is 27 years. 1 person was under 18 years of age, and there are 2 women in the list for Esfarayen whose source stated that they were women. The sources wrote about several of those killed on 18 Dey that they were Kurmanji Kurds of Khorasan.
Thursday, 18 Dey 1404 in Esfarayen
Rasoul Jafari, 19 years old, was a student and loved the songs of Dariush, especially “Talayeh-dar” (The Vanguard). He was wounded by a bullet in the protests of 18 Dey and died in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Esfarayen. Before his death he had written to his friends: “We have understood peace; we have weighed pain upon a rifle.” According to the source, his family was forced to bury him secretly at night.
Anis Gerivani, 25 years old, lived alone in Esfarayen. The family's last contact with him was around 8:30 in the evening of 18 Dey. He was killed by two bullets to the neck, and his family identified his body on Saturday, 20 Dey, after a call from a morgue in Bojnurd. Jalil Milanlouei, 47 years old, head of a Resalat Bank branch and a lecturer in economics at Esfarayen University of Medical Sciences, was the father of two children and had lost his wife to cancer the year before. His last story before going into the street was the Lion and Sun flag.
A woman whom the sources refer to by the name Fatemeh Soltani and the age of 32 was the mother of two children; she too lost her life that same night in Esfarayen from a military round. She has been quoted as saying: “Tonight I am going for the sake of my children, because they deserve to have a good life.” Bijan Ebrahimi, 31 years old, father of three children, and Morteza Yaghoubi, 43 years old, a driver and father of children whose number the sources give as three or four, were killed on the same day. Yaghoubi was buried on 21 Dey in his birthplace, the village of Naghiabad; according to the source, his body was handed over only after a written pledge was taken not to hold a memorial service.
Sorena Robatjazi, a computer engineering student at Bojnurd University of Technology who was learning a foreign language and wanted to go to Germany, was killed by several military rounds; one of the bullets hit his heart. According to the source, his body was taken to Bojnurd, and for some time the family did not know where it was.
About the sources and the incompleteness of this list
These 52 names are not all of those from Esfarayen who were executed or killed. The real number of victims from Esfarayen is higher, and we record only a name for which we have a source. The largest share of the sources for this page is held by HRANA / Human Rights Activists in Iran with 25 cases and HRANA with 23 cases; followed by Iran International with 15, the Iran Human Rights Society and iranhrs.org with 11 each, and the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (English-language) and Kurdpa with 8 cases each. The Hana Human Rights Organization has also reported 5 cases. Every name has at least one source, but some only one, and sometimes the sources do not agree on age or the number of children. For 9 of the people of Esfarayen a description of their life is available. If you knew one of the victims from Esfarayen, send us your memory or correction.