A 21-year-old female Kurdish university student was reportedly beaten to death by Iranian security forces during an anti-hijab protest.
Negin Abdolmaleki – a medical engineering student at Hamadan University of Technology – was reportedly attacked with batons by state security forces during the demo in Hamadan, the capital of Hamadan Province, in north-western Iran on 12th October.
The severely injured student managed to make it back to her dormitory where she bled to death, according to independent Kurdish media and the Iranian Students Union Council.
Bizarrely, state security forces later stormed the dorm to threaten witnesses.
They later told her family and friends to say Negin had died of food poisoning caused by eating out-of-date tinned fish.
One unnamed student is quoted as having told local media that “security forces immediately rushed to the dormitory after learning about Negin’s death and started threatening the students who were informed about the matter.
“On the same night, Abdolmaleki’s family was called to Hamedan from Qorveh city.”
Qorveh is a city in Kurdistan Province, in north-western Iran.
The young woman’s friends and family were reportedly told by the authorities to say that her cause of death was down to “consuming expired canned fish”.
There have been unconfirmed reports on social media that students at the university then organised a sit-in protest after Negin’s death and that the university was surrounded by Iranian special forces.
Protests have been gripping Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, from Saqqez, Kurdistan Province, who was on a visit to Tehran when she was arrested by morality police accused of violating hijab rules on 13th September.
She was allegedly beaten while in custody and spent the following days in a coma in the hospital before dying in the ICU on 16th September.
The clinic where she was treated said in a now-deleted social media post that she had been admitted brain-dead.
Alleged medical scans of her skull leaked by hackers showed that she had suffered bone fractures, haemorrhages, and brain oedema.
Anti-regime media are claiming that Mahsa’s medical records showing her history of heart disease were faked by the Iranian government.
The protests her death sparked are ongoing and, according to the non-profit Iran Human Rights, at least 201 people, including 28 children, have been killed so far, according to its latest figures released on 12th October.
