Photo: BBC Persian · BBC Persian
Nika Shakarami
نیکا شاکرمی
2005–2022 · 4 years ago
- Born
- 2 October 2005
- Taken
- 21 September 2022
- Age
- only 16 years old
- From
- Tehran, Tehran
Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.
Their life
Nika was born in Khorramabad and moved with her family to Karaj in 2019. She studied painting at a vocational high school, and in 2021 moved to Tehran, where she worked in a café near Enghelab Square and lived with her aunt, a painter who helped her grow as an artist.
Her family said she could draw a person's portrait at a first meeting, design, sketch, and cook too. Her mother, sister, aunt and friends describe an independent, joyful, energetic girl who encouraged her friends and dreamed of living freely. She opposed compulsory hijab and stood up to the morality patrols that pressured her and her friends.
How the regime took them
Nika went missing on the night of 20 September 2022 after joining protests in Tehran; in her last call she said she was being chased by security forces. Her family searched for nine days before they were shown her body. Her burial certificate gives 21 September and "multiple injuries caused by a hard object".
The authorities claimed she fell from a building, buried her away from her home town without her mother's consent, and arrested her aunt and uncle.
