Following escalation of the popular discontent and people’s anger about the shocking tragedy of the poor and homeless “Grave Sleepers” in Iran, the Iranian regime’s president Hassan Rouhani, in his outrageous speech on Wednesday December 28, broadcasted by regime’s TV, not only did not admit his responsibility in this regard but also tried to justify this tragedy by saying they “live in graves to save themselves from the cold.”
The state-run Shahrvand newspaper reported that there are about 300 empty graves in Nasir Abad cemetery, in Shahriar county, used by the homeless as a shelter during the cold season, but now only one homeless remains. The homeless explains: ‘Officers came this morning, took our belongings, and removed us from the cemetery after beating and then left. They didn’t come to help us. They just wanted to remove us.”
Yet, Iranian regime’s president Hassan Rouhani, in sheer demagogy and a futile attempt to evade growing public outrage and fury, claiming he was unaware of this situation, said: “We had heard that some due to addiction, poverty, and destitution, sleep in the streets, sleep under bridges… But we had rarely heard of grave sleepers. We had rarely heard that a poor person sleeps in a grave due to poverty and destitution.”
According to Shahrvand, after Rouhani’s appointed governor of Shahriar promised to resolve the issue, the authorities of Shahriar county municipality announced that they have organized and taken care of these homeless Grave Sleepers. However, they forcefully removed the homeless from the cemetery after beating them and dispersed them to take refuge elsewhere in desert or corner of a collapsed wall of nearby unfinished buildings.
In fact, Rouhani’s government is trying to wipeout the problem not resolve it by providing food and real shelter for the homeless. They are in fact trying to hide the shocking tragedy and pretend the problem does not exist anymore or resolved. Indeed, Rouhani has done nothing to resolve the issues of poverty and homelessness and their consequences including the disturbing tragedy of homeless “Sleeping in Graves.”
While trying to evade accountability, Rouhani said, “Who can accept that dozens of his countrymen who have suffered «social ills» take refuge in graves at night because of homelessness?” However, the question is what is the real reason for the «social ills»? What happened to the tens of billions of dollars of unfrozen assets after the nuclear agreement? Clearly, the catastrophic social and economic situation in Iran is the product of corruption and plundering of national wealth by government officials and their close circles.
As the result of the regime’s catastrophic social, economic and foreign policies, the money that should have been spent on improvement of Iranian people’s lives, has been spent on continuing executions and suppression at home and production of ballistic missiles and export of fundamentalism and terrorism abroad as well as meddling in other countries including supporting Bashar Assad and massacre of Syrian people in Aleppo and elsewhere, or plundered by the regime officials.
