Another teenage victim of repression in Iran: her name was Mahak Hashemi, she died in Shiraz, a city in southern Iran, from the beatings suffered by security agents, according to the reconstruction of the incident released by the Iranian grassroots activist in America, Masih Alinejad. Last Thursday, November 24, she Mahak had gone out to participate in the protests, wearing a basketball cap, as she had been doing for some time now by refusing to wear a veil.
“She was savagely killed with batons by the Islamist regime while protesting in Shiraz,” writes Alinejad. According to the activist, the authorities “even asked her family for a ransom to return her body”.
Mahak was part of a generation of young Iranians who since last September 16, after the death of Mahsa Amini, have been risking arrest, torture and even their lives to demand political freedom and civil rights. Like Mahak, Reza Kazemi was also killed by fire from security forces in Kamiyaran, he too was 16 years old as was Arshiya Imamqolizadeh Alamdari arrested for dropping a mullah’s turban, one of the protest gestures popularized by the pro- democracy.
Shiraz is the city where one of the symbol photos of the protest movement was taken, that of the “revolutionary” kiss. Mahak no longer had his mother, who died a few years ago and leaves behind his father and two younger sisters.
Unicef condemns “all the violence against children” underway in Iran, where it also confirms at least 50 spontaneously killed children among more than 450 victims. “Unicef also remains deeply concerned by the continued raids and searches conducted in some schools. Schools must always be safe places for children. Unicef has communicated its concern directly to the Iranian authorities since the first cases occurred of child casualties in response to the protests,” writes the organization.
So far the government has not released official information on the number of dead and has always disputed those provided by independent organizations, but yesterday it was the head of the Pasdaran air force, General Ali Hajizadeh who admitted that the victims “are more than 300”. Among them there are also about sixty policemen.