Photo: BBC Persian · BBC Persian
Mahsa (Jina) Amini
مهسا (ژینا) امینی
2000–2022 · 4 years ago
- Born
- 8 October 2000
- Taken
- 16 September 2022
- Age
- 22 years old
- From
- Tehran, Tehran
Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.
Their life
Jina Amini grew up in Saqqez, in Kurdistan province, in a Kurdish Sunni family. Her family called her Jina, Kurdish for "new life"; Mahsa was only the name on her papers, because registering Kurdish names was restricted.
She took natural sciences in high school, trained as a pharmacy technician, and in 2022 was admitted to the University of Urmia to study microbiology. Her mother said she had already bought the medical instruments she would need. She loved radio presenting and practised it at home, and she cared more for her studies than for the clothing shop her father had set up for her.
Relatives remember a calm girl who was always smiling. Her closest friend, her mother said, was her mother.
How the regime took them
On 13 September 2022 the morality police arrested Jina outside a Tehran metro station over her clothing and took her to the Vozara Street detention centre. Women held with her said she was beaten in the van. She collapsed inside the centre, reached Kasra Hospital in a coma and died on 16 September. Her father and brother saw bruises and bleeding from her ears; the regime blamed a childhood illness.
The cry first raised at her grave in Saqqez, "Woman, Life, Freedom", became the name of the uprising.
Sources
Checked 12 November 2026
