January Will Not End Until Justice Is Done

Why, nine months later, does the grief of 8 and 9 January 2026 remain alive in the collective memory of Iranians?

Why does it feel as though time has stopped? Why, nine months after 8 and 9 January 2026, have the images of those killed and the scenes from those days still not left our minds? Why might people gradually come to terms with the deaths of their loved ones, while the memory of people being killed—people they had never seen or known—continues to occupy their thoughts and feelings?

At Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran, a sister wants to have the word ‘Javidnam’ (‘everlasting name’) inscribed on her brother’s gravestone, but fears that the stone may be destroyed. Her 38-year-old brother, Mohammadreza, was killed in the January protests. In a report published by The Guardian in July, she says she is waiting for conditions to calm down so she can have the word engraved on her brother’s grave.

This is not the grief of just one family. When even writing a single word on a gravestone is fraught with fear, how can we expect the memory of what happened to be easily consigned to the past?

The seasons have changed, but images, names and accounts from January continue to be shared on social media, bringing the grief and anger of those days back to many people. Is this because of the scale of the tragedy, or because of what happened afterwards and is still happening?

Why does time stop in the mind?

In psychology, calendar time and subjective time are not the same. Research shows that experiencing traumatic events can affect our perception of time and the way we remember things.

In a review article published in 2024 in the journal Psychological Trauma, researchers examined the relationship between traumatic memories and changes in time perception. Memories of such events may be reactivated by seeing an image, hearing a sound or encountering a familiar cue, as though the distance between past and present has narrowed.

This does not necessarily mean that someone has a mental health disorder. But it helps explain why an event that happened months ago may still feel emotionally close.

Even so, the experience of January cannot be explained solely by the workings of memory, because for some Iranians the consequences of that event are still unfolding.

Why does grief for people we did not know endure?

People do not grieve only for those close to them. Sometimes, in the face of a stranger, they see their own child, the hopes of a generation or a future that could have taken a different shape.

In such circumstances, loss extends beyond the family and becomes a collective experience.

A systematic review of 20 studies on loss resulting from social conflict and political repression, published in 2026, shows that collective identity, commemorating victims and pursuing justice all play a role in experiencing and making sense of grief.

This phenomenon is not confined to direct witnesses of violence. A qualitative study based on eight interviews with Iranians living abroad, presented in March 2026, described disrupted sleep, psychological distress, guilt and changes in the experience of time following the January massacre.

Social media also plays a role in keeping these memories alive. Images and accounts are seen again and again, and can rekindle the emotions felt at first.

But the repeated circulation of images alone does not explain why an event may become part of a generation’s historical memory. To understand this, we must also look at the conditions that followed the tragedy.

What prevents the grief of January from easing?

Perhaps the most important difference between a personal bereavement and a death caused by political violence lies in the questions that remain after death: Who is responsible? Why did this happen? What is the truth, and will justice be done?

In its report of 23 January 2026, Amnesty International documented cases of pressure on families, restrictions on mourning, enforced disappearances and attempts to prevent the scale of the killings from coming to light.

In Shahrivar 1405, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission also documented widespread human rights violations in the crackdown on protests, reporting continued detentions, torture, death sentences and difficulties faced by families seeking information about the fate of their loved ones.

Even in Mehr, fresh Reuters reports described the continued pursuit and punishment of people associated with the protests.

For some families and members of the public, therefore, the month of Dey is not merely the memory of an event in the past. Its consequences are still present in their lives today.

A study of 122 parents bereaved by the Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea also found that feeling there had been less justice after the disaster was associated with a greater likelihood of experiencing complicated grief and post-traumatic stress symptoms at the same time.

This finding does not prove that injustice is the only factor in the persistence of grief, but it shows that the circumstances following a disaster can play an important part in prolonging suffering.

Should anger remain alive?

Anger in the face of injustice can be a moral response. Social psychology research has also shown a connection between a sense of injustice, anger and participation in collective action.

But the question is this: to avoid forgetting those who were killed, must we always remain angry with the same intensity?

There is a difference between anger and seeking justice. Anger can motivate the search for truth and demands for accountability, but if it becomes an exhausting form of suffering, it may diminish a person’s ability to carry on with life and pursue their aims.

Letting go of anger does not mean forgetting the victims or turning a blind eye to justice.

What can endure over time is not only anger; memory, moral commitment and the demand for accountability can also be passed from one generation to the next.

Can justice bring this suffering to an end?

In its legal and social sense, justice means more than punishing those responsible. In the UN framework for transitional justice, truth-seeking, judicial accountability, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence are complementary components.

Justice cannot bring back those who were killed, and it does not necessarily bring an end to their families’ grief. But it can establish the truth, identify responsibilities and help create the conditions to prevent violence from happening again.

This does not concern only the victims’ families. Society, too, has the right to know what happened, why it happened and who was responsible.

A GAMAAN poll in Khordad 1405, despite the limitations of internet-based sampling, found that around 80 per cent of the target population surveyed considered the government’s handling of the Dey protests wrong. This finding does not measure the intensity of people’s grief or anger, but it shows that a negative assessment of the crackdown was not confined to direct witnesses and the families of those killed.

When will January end?

Nine months have passed since 8 and 9 January 2026, but for part of Iranian society, those days have not yet become a past that is over.

What keeps this grief alive may be a combination of painful memories, shared identity, repeated images, a continuing sense of threat and justice not yet achieved. With the data available, it is still not possible to claim that this anger has grown every day throughout society.

But we can distinguish between two things: not forgetting a catastrophe, and leaving it unanswered.

The memory of those killed can remain alive even after justice is achieved, and become part of a nation’s history. What must come to an end is uncertainty about the truth, the perpetrators’ immunity from accountability, and the possibility of violence being repeated.

Time may lessen the intensity of grief, but on its own it neither reveals the truth nor delivers justice.

January will not end until justice is done—not because justice can erase the memories of those days from people’s minds, but because, until the truth is revealed and responsibilities are established, the case of those days will remain open in society’s memory and conscience.