By: Rezvan Moghaddam

On Saturday, July 19, 2025, a horrifying crime shook the city of Khorramabad, Lorestan
province. A 39-year-old man used a cold weapon to brutally kill his 40-year-old wife and
their two children, aged 10 and 11, before attempting to take his own life. Official media
outlets like Rokna published only a brief note, reducing the crime to a matter of “family
problems” without disclosing the identities of the victims or exploring the deeper social
and psychological factors behind it.
At first glance, the case may appear to be a “family murder”, a vague and inadequate
term that state media often use in place of words like domestic violence, honor killing, or
femicide. But reality is far more complex, rooted in layers of misogyny, psychological
abuse, and structural violence. In many similar cases, suspicions, possessiveness,
patriarchal control masquerading as tradition or “honor,” and the lack of legal and
psychological support for women are the real drivers behind such tragedies.
For instance, in May 2025, a 39-year-old man in Mashhad killed his 21-year-old wife by
stabbing her multiple times. In that case too, media attributed the motive to “family
disputes.” However, the killer later confessed to chronic suspicion, tracking, threats,
forced confessions, and ongoing psychological abuse toward his wife. These stories
reveal that what is casually dismissed as “family problems” often masks a deep, violent
structure of male dominance and impunity.
According to the Stop honor Killings Campaign, at least 187 honor-related killings were
documented in 2024, a figure that almost certainly underrepresents the true scale, since
many such crimes go unreported or are buried by judicial and media silence. These
killings are rarely spontaneous acts of rage; they are systemic, growing from silence,
discrimination, and the lack of support mechanisms for women and children.
The role of state-run media in such cases is to sanitize and distort. With censorship and
narrative manipulation, these outlets consistently avoid honest engagement with the
truth. By omitting names, motives, and systemic critiques, they not only fail to provide
clarity but also contribute to the conditions that allow such horrors to repeat.
The victims, women and children, are casualties of a broken system: laws that view
women as men’s property, a culture that legitimizes violence as “honor,” and media that
reduce murder to a “family problem.” Society cannot move toward justice unless its
language is aligned with truth, not with the normalization of femicide.
The killer has been identified as Hamid Bastami, a 39-year-old employee of the
Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs and resident of Khorramabad. Using a cold

weapon, he slit the throats of his two wives, Farzaneh Sadeghi (a public school teacher)
and Elham Salari, both 40 years old, and their two sons, Amirabbas and Amirmahdi
Bastami, aged 10 and 11. Afterward, he attempted suicide using the same weapon but
failed. Shockingly, he recorded the entire crime and stated that his motive stemmed
from job dissatisfaction and not being promoted to a managerial position at the
foundation. Meanwhile, state media outlets misrepresented the motive as mere “family
problems.”

#StophonorKillingsCampaign

#Khorramabad

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#WomenDeserveToLive

#SayNoToViolenceAgainstWomen

#TheIslamicRepublicIsResponsibleForWomen’sMurders

SayNoToMisogynistCulture

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