Guwahati: Hadis Najafi, a young Iranian woman whose video of her fearlessly walking into the heart of a protest while tying her uncut hair back went viral was shot and killed there, according to reports.
A viral video of her funeral depicts mourners sobbing over a picture of her on a recently excavated grave.
She reportedly had gunshot wounds to her abdomen, neck, heart, and hand.
Iran has been experiencing deadly turmoil for almost a week. It started when Mahsa Amini, 22, passed out in police custody after being detained for wearing an “improper” hijab, the legal covering that women are required to wear.
This past weekend, hundreds of people also demonstrated against Mahsa Amini’s passing in London. Amini passed away on September 16.
According to medical records, the young woman from the Iranian province of Kurdistan was violently struck on the head many times before going into a coma. She reportedly “suffered a sudden heart attack,” according to Iranian authorities, according to Euronews.
Iranian law now mandates that women wear the hijab as of 1979’s Islamic Revolution. Iranian women frequently wear their headscarves loosely around their ears or let them hang down to their necks due to the unpopularity of the policy.
According to Euronews, the rule’s implementation in 1981 sparked widespread protests that have periodically occurred ever since.
The regime wants to prove that they didn’t use any violence (against Amini) by using violence against protestors,” said Mohammad Hoshr, a lawyer. “It does not make any sense.”
“They (Iran’s authorities) are coming onto the TV and saying that nobody even touched this woman in custody, while at the same time they are shooting people on the streets,” he added.
Since protests started last week in Iran, 35 people have died. The great majority of these fatalities were caused by security personnel brutally dispersing protesters, occasionally using live weapons. Security police have also detained hundreds of people, according to Euronews.
Along with other western nations, the UK government has strongly denounced the “death” of Mahsa Amini; nonetheless, there have been complaints that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was not directly pressed on the matter during a recent UN meeting in New York.
A significant portion of the Iranian populace has a strong dislike for several of the country’s laws, including the requirement to wear the headscarf. Their frustrations have only grown as a result of economic concerns, namely inflation and a severely devalued currency fueled by sanctions.
At this week’s protests, there have been frequent calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the supreme leader of Iran, with many Iranians yelling “down with the tyrant,” according to Euronews.