Homeless people sleeping in empty graves forcibly removed by Iranian officials

At least 50 homeless people were reportedly forced out of a cemetery in Shahriar, Iran, after it emerged they had been sleeping in empty graves.

The people sleeping in the cemetery were allegedly beaten and thrown out of the graveyard in Nasirabad, Shahriar Province after Shahrvand newspaper covered the story, the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported.

However, when charities and other press went to the graveyard after it was reported there were people sleeping there, they found it empty, with one homeless man reporting the group had been forced from the area.

He told press: "Leave us alone. A group of officials came here early in the morning and beat us out of here, now we don't have even an empty grave to sleep in."

The governor of Sharyar, Saeid Naji, had reportedly told the state-sanctioned Islamic Republic News Agency the problem of homeless people sleeping in the cemetery would be specially dealt with, although there were no specific details of what this entailed.

Shahin Gobadi, from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, (NCRI) said: "The phenomenon of grave-sleepers is another result of the devastating rule of the clerical regime in Iran, a country that sits on an ocean of oil.

"It is now abundantly clear that contrary to all of Rouhani's claims of 'moderation' and improving public welfare, during his tenure official embezzlement and corruption has only intensified and the regime has devoted all its available resources to repression at home, massacring the Syrian people and sponsoring terror.

"That is also true regarding all the assets that were unfrozen as a result of the nuclear deal. In the face of these horrifying images, the regime's officials including Rouhani have desperately resorted to sheer demagogy to fend off the public outcry and outrage."

The Iranian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.