Hundreds of Iranian Twitter users have launched a campaign this week with the Persian hashtag “I bear witness” to highlight executions, killings and imprisonments of opponents, as well as denial of civil rights to citizens.

Individuals tweet saying “I Bear Witness” to cases they are personally aware of or related to their immediate family or circle of friends to mention the death or the persecution of an individual or a group.

The Twitter storm includes cases when the Islamic Republic killed and persecuted many opponents of the 1979 revolution and later executed thousands of dissidents in prisons in 1988, as well as violence and persecution in the last two decades.

One user who is simply named Amineh says, “I bear witness to the mass killing of 1988. I bear witness that my father and all his friends that we used to meet behind prison glass partitions, were hanged for the crime of supporting the Mojahedin Khalq organization  and buried in mass graves, even though they were serving their prison terms.”

This tweet shows five young women executed in prison in 1988

Others also highlight cases of confiscation of property at the early years of the revolutionary government, which victimized former officials, businessmen and members of religious minorities.

One user mentions the persecution of his family as supporters of the Mojahedin and says all his father’s property was confiscated by a cleric named Gholamhossein Mohseni Ajei who later became a top official in the country’s Judiciary.

A user named Hafez Fazeli says the Revolutionary Guard killed his cousin and then handed the body to the family claiming “anti-revolutionaries” had killed him.

Many also highlight violence by the government in nationwide protests that shook Iran in 2009, 2017, 2018 and in November 2019. Some have published photos of adolescents and children killed in mass protests in the past three years.

Shanaz Akmali, a mother whose son was killed in the 2009 protests tweeted on October 2 that she bears witness they buried her son secretly at night.

Others have upheld the memory of those who died in the crash of a Ukrainian airliner on January 8, when the Revolutionary Guards fired two missiles at the plane as it was taking off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport.

Persecution of women’s rights activists and opponents of compulsory hijab was another subject in the Twitter storm. Many paid tribute to prisoners such as Nasrin Sotoudeh, Narges Mohammadi and other female political prisoners, who have been sentenced to long prison terms in closed-door and unfair trials which applies to all opponents arrested for political reasons.

Discrimination against and persecution of religious minorities was also highlighted by dozens of Twitter users. In past 41 years many members of the Baha’i sect have been executed, imprisoned, denied basic rights and banned from education. Dervishes are another persecuted religious sect. Currently dozens of dervishes are in prisons accused of sedition against the regime.

Persecution of workers who demand their wages and safe working conditions was highlighted in many other tweets. Ehsan Ghadiri says he bears witness that a worker in a sugar factory committed suicide because his could not live on his meager $100 monthly salary.