Iran and Tyranny: Remembering Nika Shakarami and Countless Others
Kanako Mita, Sawako Utsumi, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 promised a new political and religious order. Yet generations of Iranians, particularly women and young people, have experienced a system in which personal freedoms, dissent, and opposition to clerical authority can carry an immense human cost. For Iranian women, this suffering has not been episodic. It has been systemic, relentless, and passed from one generation to another.
Among the countless names associated with this repression is Nika Shakarami.
Nika was a young teenager when her life was brutally extinguished during the 2022 protests. She had joined demonstrations associated with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and subsequently disappeared in Tehran. Her death became one of the most powerful symbols of the uprising, alongside Mahsa Amini, Sarina Esmailzadeh, Hadis Najafi, and many others.
The circumstances surrounding Nika’s death remain deeply disturbing. Her family rejected the official explanation, while international human rights organisations documented serious contradictions surrounding what happened to her. Her body was returned to her family after several days, while her relatives reported injuries that contradicted the official narrative.
New documents subsequently examined and verified by the BBC presented an even more disturbing picture of the final hours of Nika’s life. The BBC reported: “BBC Eye investigates a shocking report, written by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), showing how Nika Shakarami was hunted down, sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death.”
Yes, the “real child of Iran” was sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and killed by the tyranny of the Islamic regime that holds power in Iran by the rule of fear.
The tragedy of Nika is inseparable from the wider political reality of Iran, where enormous power remains concentrated within the Islamic Republic’s political, religious, judicial, and security structures. When power becomes sufficiently concentrated, dissent can be transformed from a legitimate expression of society into an existential threat to the state.
The result can be devastating.
Approximately 550 protesters were killed during the 2022 uprising, according to Iran Human Rights documentation, although such figures represent documented cases and the full number may be higher. Thousands more were arrested, imprisoned, or subjected to intimidation. For those accused of challenging the state, the threat of torture, lengthy imprisonment, and execution has remained an ever-present instrument of control.
In the 1980s, Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri wrote to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and asked: “Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?”
Decades later, the question of violence against women and political prisoners remained tragically relevant.
Accordingly, the Islamic Revolution fears the voices of its youth – especially young ladies! Therefore, the oppressive Islamic regime even kills young teenage girls and ladies to preserve power at all costs.
Mahsa Amini’s death became the catalyst for nationwide protests. Sarina Esmailzadeh, another young teenager, became one of the faces of the movement. Hadis Najafi became another symbol of courage. Countless unnamed Iranians also paid the ultimate price, their lives disappearing into statistics while their families were left with grief, unanswered questions, and in many cases fear of the authorities.
The struggle represented by Woman, Life, Freedom was not simply about one item of clothing or one regulation. It reflected a much deeper confrontation over who possesses authority over the individual — the state, religious institutions, or the individual themselves.
For many Iranian women and young people, the issue became one of dignity, personal choice, and the right to determine the direction of their own lives.
The response of the state demonstrated the enormous imbalance between an individual protester and a highly organised security apparatus.
Nika’s mother expressed the generational dimension of this struggle with extraordinary poignancy: “Like Nika, I have been against compulsory hijab since I was a child. But my generation was not brave enough to protest… People my age accepted years of suppression, intimidation, and humiliation – but my daughter protested and she had every right to do so.”
Those words transcend one family.
The light of Nika’s life — like the light of Mahsa, Sarina, Hadis, and countless other Iranians — continues to exist in the memories of those who refuse to allow their deaths to become forgotten statistics. Accordingly, the struggle against tyranny continues today in Iran – just like yesterday!
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