The Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) reported that Roubina Aminian, a student at Shariati Technical College in Tehran, was shot dead by military and security forces during demonstrations in the Iranian capital.
Her killing comes as reports continue to emerge of large numbers of protesters being killed across the country, although the scale of the deaths remains unclear due to severe communication restrictions.
Aminian, whose family is from Marivan and lives in Kermanshah, had been living in Tehran to pursue her studies.
According to an informed source, she was shot in the back with live ammunition near Shahid Beheshti University on Thursday evening, 8 January, and died at the scene.
“When Rubina’s family went to identify her body at one of Tehran’s hospitals, they saw the bodies of many other protesters, mostly young people, who had been killed by government forces during the protests,” the source told KHRN.
The source added that security agencies initially prevented the family from taking Aminian’s body. However, they later managed to secretly remove it from the hospital. They had planned to bury her in Kermanshah, but the heavy security presence outside their home and the authorities’ refusal to issue a death certificate forced them to abandon that plan.
The young woman’s body was eventually transferred to a village near Marivan, where she was buried. The family were not permitted to hold a public funeral in either Kermanshah or Marivan.
Despite multiple reports of other protesters being killed by government forces, KHRN has so far been unable to verify the number or identities of additional victims due to the nationwide internet shutdown and the inability to make international phone calls.