As anti-regime protests continue to rage across Iran, the mother of a 16-year-old Iranian girl, Nika Shakrami, who died during the protests, rejected official claims that her death was caused by a fall from a building and insisted that she was beaten to death by regime forces.
Nasreen Shakrami said the authorities refused to inform the family of her daughter’s death for ten days and then disappeared Nika from the morgue and buried her in a remote village without the family’s consent. Her mother says the records of Nika’s death show her skull was badly bruised and her injuries were consistent with repeated blows to her head.
The young student has become another symbol of the protest movement that is now entering its fourth week and is considered the biggest challenge to the authority of the Iranian regime in at least 13 years. Iran’s leaders tried to paint the protests as a foreign plot and a separatist push by the Kurdish minority. However, an influx of people from all strata of the Iranian population continues to fuel the struggle movement.
Meanwhile, another girl was reported to have been murdered by the security forces. According to reports, Serena Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old who published vlogs on YouTube, was killed when the security forces beat her with batons during a demonstration in Gohardsht in the Alborz district about two weeks ago (September 23).
The demonstrations across the country focus on women’s rights, and especially on demands to end the obligation to wear the hijab, which the theocratic regime enforces by law. Students were at the forefront of the demonstrations and men also expressed their sympathy with the women of Iran.
The protests began in the Kurdish regions of Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mehsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police who arrested her for violating the women’s dress code. However, the protests quickly spread to other parts of the country, including the capital Tehran. Almost a month later, the movement has roused women in many towns, cities and even villages.
The momentum of the protests shows little sign of slowing down while defiance of social norms only increases. When Iran’s conservative president Ebrahim Raisi visited a campus in Tehran, students defied him and told him to “get over it.”
Also, during the evening hackers managed to take over the state television broadcasts and instead of the usual sequence of broadcasts they placed a burning picture of the leader Khamenei with a target on his head and published pictures of Mahsa Amini and other people killed in the riots.
Human rights organizations strongly condemned the Iranian authorities for the way they suppressed the violent protests. It is estimated that 150 people have been killed since the beginning of the protests.
At least 92 have died so far in protests against the regime in Iran, in the parliament positions are being hardened
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