Summer of 1988 marked one of Iran’s darkest chapters, when tens of thousands of political prisoners—mostly PMOI/MEK supporters—were executed. Among them was Forouzan Abdi, a national volleyball champion, alongside doctors, students, mothers, and countless others.
Forouzan Abdi Pirbazari was a physical education student and a member of the Iranian women’s national volleyball team before the 1979 Revolution. A celebrated athlete born in Tehran in 1957, her life changed after the fall of the Pahlavi’s regime as she became involved in political activities. Her unwavering commitment to freedom would ultimately lead her to martyrdom during the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran.
In June 1981, during the early days of the clerical regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent, 23-year-old Forouzan was arrested for supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) and sentenced to five years in prison. Even after completing her sentence, she was illegally held for an additional two years, a common practice for unrepentant political prisoners.
In the summer of 1988, her resistance reached a new climax. During the state-sanctioned massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners, Forouzan was brought before a “Death Committee” for a trial lasting only minutes. She was asked to denounce the PMOI. Her refusal sealed her fate. She was sent before a firing squad, becoming one of the first female PMOI supporters to be executed in the atrocity. It is worth noting that during the 1988 massacre, over 30,000 political prisoners were executed, mostly PMOI supporters.
Forouzan’s fellow inmates remember her as a resilient, beloved, composed, and patient figure.
Even in the grim confines of prison, she maintained her athletic spirit. During a brief period when prisoners at Qezel Hesar Prison had access to a yard, she defied a ban on group sports by organizing volleyball matches.
In 1984, while imprisoned, Forouzan formed sports teams and began teaching volleyball to fellow inmates. It is said that she spent every morning until noon in the prison yard, coaching the teams she had organized, and in the afternoons, she would run alongside other prisoners.
Her resilience, however, was met with extreme punishment. As one former prisoner recounted, Forouzan was subjected to horrific conditions. In early 1982, she was held in a punishment ward at Qezel Hesar, where up to 30 people were crammed into cells built for three. Later, she and a few others were forced to live in a filthy bathroom, causing them all to develop skin diseases.
For her resistance to the guards’ inhumane regulations, prison officials kept her in the solitary confinement cells of Gohardasht Prison for over a year, from the autumn of 1983 to the winter of 1984. There, she was deprived of all contact with other inmates, denied access to newspapers or fresh air, and often forbidden from receiving family visits.
Afterward, she was transferred back to Qezel Hesar and then to the infamous Evin Prison in 1986. Because of her continued protests, she was almost always held in punishment wards, where cell doors were kept locked and prisoners were allowed out for only thirty minutes, three times a day, to take care of all their needs.
Among the tens of thousands murdered in the 1988 massacre, Forouzan Abdipour was in one of the first groups of PMOI supporters to be tried and later executed. Her legacy, however, endured. Prisoners later held in the prison infirmary reported seeing a poem etched on a cell wall, believed to be hers:
“Oh God, help me, like a worthy servant (Abdi), to be a shining candle (Forouzan) on Your path.”