Despite the mullahs’ regime in Iran throttling the internet, nationwide protests continue. Students join in too. Two young women pay for their resistance with their lives. For days they were considered missing.
Violence against protesters in Iran has already claimed the lives of nearly a hundred people, according to Human Rights Watch. Among them are two young women who are said to have been killed by police officers during the protests. 16-year-old YouTuber Sarina Esmailzadeh died after security forces hit her in the head with batons, according to Amnesty International. Her death was not reported until authorities released the body. Her family had previously searched for her for ten days.
17-year-old Nika Shakarami also suddenly disappeared during a protest rally in the capital, Tehran, on September 20. She has since been missed by her family. Her relatives are looking for her in prisons, hospitals and even morgues, writes the British newspaper “The Sun”.
Atesh Shakarami, Nika’s aunt, told BBC Farsi the young woman left the house with a bottle of water and a towel. Both served to defend against tear gas. Shortly before her death, she is said to have phoned a friend. She said she was “on the run from the security guards”.
After days of searching, the certainty came: The girl had been identified in a morgue. She suffered a fractured skull and her nose was smashed. The official cause of death was a fall from a height, according to BBC Farsi. However, relatives do not believe the official version. Nika’s family doesn’t believe it because pictures are supposed to show the body lying on the ground; her mobile phone and a water bottle were arranged next to her “for the photo”. Not wanting to mourn in silence, her mother joined the protests in the streets, a video on Twitter shows.
Violent clashes broke out at Tehran’s Sharif University on Monday night: the police used tear gas and paintball guns against around 200 protesters. Protests have now apparently also taken place in schools. Video footage released by the Kurdish human rights group Hengaw showed schoolgirls protesting in two cities in Iran’s Kurdistan province. In the center of Mariwan, they shouted “women, life, freedom”. The video could not initially be independently verified.
The protests in Iran were triggered by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The young Kurdish woman was arrested by the Morality Police in Tehran on September 13, apparently for not wearing the Islamic headscarf according to the rules. After her arrest, Amini collapsed under mysterious circumstances at the police station and was pronounced dead at the hospital three days later. At least 92 people have been killed in the protests so far, according to the Oslo-based organization Iran Human Rights (IHR). More than a thousand people were arrested.
There is currently little information about the demonstrations due to the restrictions on the internet. According to eyewitnesses, protests also take place on the roofs of houses. Neighbors gather there and call out system-critical slogans. The fate of a musician is unclear: the Iranian singer Schwerwin Hajipur had more than 40 million clicks on Instagram with a protest song – but the video was removed on Thursday evening. The singer is said to have been arrested in the north of the country. The song entitled “For” describes, among other things, the demands of the demonstrators. “For a longing for a normal life, for dancing in the streets, for kissing without fear,” the song says.
In Berlin, a 34-year-old tried to carry out an arson attack on the Iranian embassy. The man poured a liquid on the sidewalk in front of the embassy building in the Dahlem district on Monday afternoon and set it on fire, the police said. Property security officers noticed this and held the man until other officers arrived. Soot remained on a stone concrete base of the fence and a sign attached to it. According to the information, no one was injured. The 34-year-old was released from police custody after identification treatment. The cell phone of the man with whom he is said to have filmed the crime was confiscated. The state security took over the further investigations.
In response to the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Iran, the US has announced further sanctions against Tehran. The United States would “continue to hold Iranian officials accountable and support the rights of Iranians to protest freely,” said US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday (local time).
