Demonstration on Oct. 3rd 2022 in Nantes, France, in solidarity with Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian morality police custody. (Credit: Damien Meyer/AFP)
PARIS — "I am really hoping that in some years from now, after everything has changed, I will be happy to have been involved by taking part in this protest," Iranian woman Hadis Najafi, 22, said in a self-recorded video as she prepared to take to the streets.
Shortly after recording the message to her phone, Najafi was killed while participating in a street protest on Sept. 21 in Karaj, outside Tehran.
According to Amnesty International, she was shot by security forces several times at close range, with birdshot wounds to the face, neck and chest. Najafi was one of dozens of people who rights groups say have been killed in the Iranian security forces' crack down on protests that erupted over the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.
The protests have broken taboos in Iran, with slogans shouted against the regime and women removing their headscarves. But security forces have hit back with a lethal force that Amnesty says raises concerns of an intent to kill demonstrators.
In a video recorded by her grieving family, Najafi's sister showed the backpack, covered in blood, that was recovered after she was shot.
"It was because of Mahsa Amini that she stood tall and went out," she said. "We lost Hadis and we are not afraid of anything."
Her distraught mother added: "My daughter was murdered for hijab, for Mahsa Amini. She lost her life for Mahsa. She wanted to keep Mahsa's name alive."
'At the forefront'
Norway-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) says over 90 people have been killed in the crackdown, including seven women, while Amnesty says it has confirmed 52 names of those killed, including five women, one girl and five boys.
The women killed had no previous experience of political activism. According to relatives, they went to the streets for a movement they believed offered an unprecedented glimpse of hope
"Women have been at the forefront of this movement and the very first protest was organized by Kurdish women," Roya Boroumand, executive director of the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, told AFP.
The funeral of Amini, an Iranian Kurd, in her home town of Saqqez in Kurdistan province, marked by the initial protests as women took off their headscarves in defiance of the Islamic Republic's strict dress rules.
"And [security forces] have killed with no hesitation. They did not even wait for the movement to get out of control to shoot," Boroumand added.
Minoo Majidi, 62, was killed by a shot fired by security forces during a protest on Sept. 20 in the Kurdish-populated city of Kermanshah in northwestern Iran, according to the Norway-based Hengaw rights group.
In a striking image of defiance, one of Majidi's daughters posed beside her mother's flower-covered grave bare-headed, dressed in black with a white scarf around her neck, according to an image that has gone viral on social media.
Her hair was cropped to the skull and, in her left hand, she held the long locks of hair she had cut off, an apparent tribute to her mother and Mahsa Amini.
Ghazaleh Chelavi, 32, a keen mountain climber, was shot and killed on Sept. 20 in the northern Caspian Sea city of Amol, according to social media channels. Hannaneh Kia, 23, was killed the same day in the city of Nowshahr, according to family sources and activists. Amnesty reported that two friends said she was shot on her way home from a doctor's visit.
'They will keep shooting'
Activists say nearly all the victims died after being shot at close range.
But Sarina Esmailzadeh, aged just 16 and, like Hadis Najafi, also from Karaj, died as result of blows to the head when security forces beat her with batons on Sept. 23, according to Amnesty.
Amnesty also alleged that, in a frequently used tactic, Iranian security and intelligence agents subjected the girl's family to "intense harassment" to coerce them into silence.
Nika Shahkarami went missing on Sept. 20 after heading out to join a protest in Tehran, two weeks before she was due to celebrate her 17th birthday, her aunt Atash Shahkarami wrote on social media.
Her family was finally allowed to see the body on Oct. 1 and were due to bury her in her home city of Khorramabad in Lorestan province on what would have been her 17th birthday, Atash Shahkarami wrote.
But both BBC Persian and Iran Wire reported the authorities had taken possession of the body and secretly buried it Monday in another village, to avoid a funeral that could spark a protest.
Meanwhile, Atash Shahkarami was herself arrested, the reports said. She has been inactive on social media since Oct. 2.
"This is not the end. They will keep arresting people and keep shooting as long as people take to the streets. And people have no other venue to express dissent," Boroumand said.
Reporting contributed by Stuart Williams.