In a harrowing development out of Tehran, over 100 trans prisoners have been reported missing and are feared dead after an Israeli airstrike devastated the infamous Evin Prison during the tail end of the Israel-Iran war. The strike, which occurred on June 23—just one day before a ceasefire was declared—has turned what was already a human rights nightmare into a humanitarian catastrophe.
Evin Prison, notorious for its decades-long history of abuse, is Iran’s go-to facility for locking up political dissidents, activists, journalists, and foreign nationals. It’s also home to Iran’s transgender prisoners—often detained not because they’ve broken any laws, but because simply being trans in Iran remains a societal taboo and a bureaucratic nightmare. Despite Iran’s legal allowance for gender transition under strict medical oversight, trans people continue to face rampant discrimination, state-sanctioned violence, and criminalization in practice.
Now, according to human rights lawyer Reza Shafakhah, entire wings of the prison housing trans inmates have been reduced to rubble. The Iranian government, unsurprisingly tight-lipped, has said the prisoners are “missing” but acknowledged they are “presumed dead.” This silence has only deepened the trauma for families and advocates desperate for answers.
The Quiet Genocide of Trans Lives
Let’s be clear: this is not just a tragic side effect of war. This is a targeted failure to protect the most marginalized people, and it’s drenched in systemic erasure. Iran’s treatment of trans individuals—pushing them into gender reassignment surgery, offering zero legal protections, and jailing those who step out of line—is already a human rights disaster. Now, these lives are snuffed out in silence, without names, without memorial, without global outcry.
One former inmate once described the Transgender Ward at Evin as “a place where you can’t even see sunlight.” They recalled begging to be taken to the infirmary just to get a glimpse of light. If that doesn’t say it all about how Iran treats its trans citizens, this latest strike surely does.
And where is the world’s outrage? It’s a sad day when more fury is shown over bombed-out buildings than the vaporization of queer lives. Over 70 people were officially confirmed dead in the strike, including guards, admin staff, and relatives visiting on that fatal day. But for the trans prisoners? No names, no funerals, no justice.
This is not collateral damage. This is the erasure of queer humanity in a regime that criminalizes identity. And the rest of us? We should be screaming. Because the silence — that deafening, damning silence — is complicity.