On the occasion of the second anniversary of the death of Nika Shakarami, a teenage protester who died during the nationwide protests in Iran in 2022, her family reported that the roads leading to the cemetery where she is buried have been blocked.
According to these reports, officials are not even allowing Nika’s family to enter the cemetery and visit her grave.
Nika Shakarami was one of hundreds of protesters killed during the protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police in 2022. Government authorities forced her family to bury Nika in a remote village near Khorramabad in the Lorestan province.
Similarly, on the second anniversary of the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, a comparable situation occurred at the Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, where she is buried, and officials prevented her family members from leaving their home to visit the grave and pay tribute to this young woman.
Seventeen-year-old Nika Shakarami disappeared on the night of September 19, 2022, during the first days of the nationwide protests, on Keshavarz Boulevard in Tehran, and her body was handed over to her family eight days later.
On May 10, 2024, BBC World Service reported that it had obtained a “highly confidential document” from the Iranian regime, indicating that Nika Shakarami was sexually assaulted and killed after being arrested by security forces.
The Iranian regime has a long history of sexually abusing political prisoners and using it as a tool to suppress protests and break the prisoners’ spirit.
