A 16-year-old girl was killed in Iran for leaving the house in a baseball cap instead of the traditional veil. The news was disclosed by the Iranian activist, Masih Alinejad, refugee in the United States.
The victim’s name is Mahak Hashemi and it is yet another life cut short by the forces of order in the Islamic State, after the infamous case of the death of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
The girl had in fact decided to wear a sports cap and not the veil intended to cover the faces of Islamic women to stroll through the streets of her city, Shiraz, located in south-central Iran.
The city of Shiraz had already made headlines for the diffusion of a photo of two young lovers who, defying every taboo imposed by the regime, had been portrayed as they exchanged a kiss in the middle of the city’s traffic. For this reason the area is considered an important hotbed of revolt and is particularly guarded by the authorities.
mahak she was noticed by some agents of the security forces and beaten to death with batons. Probably the gesture of wearing the baseball cap was a way for the girl to demonstrate in protest against the regime in power in the country.
16-year-old Iran killed: funeral forbidden
The episode happened Thursday 24 November 2022 and for 48 hours no one among family and friends had news of her. Her parents had therefore reported her disappearance, asking for help from the authorities so that she could be traced.
Only the Saturday next the father was summoned by the authorities and invited to go to the city morgue for the recognition of two bodies whose identity was unknown. One of these bodies belonged to her young daughter.
The body was in terrible condition: the face was half completely destroyed by the beatings inflicted, the spine broken by the beatings.
To the father it was forbidden to celebrate the funeral of the young woman and a large ransom was requested from him to get her daughter’s body back. IRGC officials have categorized the death as an accident, as has already happened to the countless victims of the uprising.
50 minors died in the protests
Mahak Hashemi he was only 16 and lived in Shiraz with his family. A few years ago she had lost her mother to cancer and thus helped her father look after the two younger sisters.
She was deeply moved by the repression of the regime and by what happened to Mahsa Amini so much so that he had wanted to take part in the protest with a very strong gesture: completely abandoning the hijab when he left the house and wearing a baseball cap to cover his hair anyway.
Unfortunately, the gesture of protest was fatal for her. You are only the last, in chronological order, of the victims caused by the violent repression of protests conducted by the Iranian regime. The news reported by the press speak of 416 deaths, ben 50 of them had not yet reached the age of majority.
Sixteen like mahak It was also Reza Kazemi shot dead by security forces a Kamiyaran in the tumult of a protest demonstration.
Yesterday too l’Unicef he had intervened to denounce the episodes of violence especially against children under the age of 18. In fact, an official note called for “an end to all forms of violence and abuse which, according to reports, have caused the death of over 50 children and the injury of many others during the public unrest in Iran”.
A few days earlier the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, during an extraordinary session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva, he had pointed out the impressive number of minors arrested in protest demonstrations, emphasizing that in some cases the capture of the boys was carried out inside schools.
