Hadis Najafi took to the streets of Karaj last week in protest at Iran’s hijab mandate and was shot dead. She was not openly outspoken about women’s liberation but enjoyed sharing her life with her followers on social media.
She was not an activist or openly outspoken online about women’s liberation, but she was still gunned down in her home city campaigning for her right to live and dress how she wanted.
Hadis Najafi, 23, took to the streets of Karaj last week to speak out against Iran’s strict hijab mandateand was shot dead.
Her death has fuelled further anger in a country already reckoning with the strict rule of the so-called morality police.
Part of Iran’s Generation Z, Hadis was a young woman who grew up in the age of the internet and social media.
Like Zoomers everywhere, these digital natives are connected to the rest of the world in a way their parents could never have imagined.
Hopes for a better future
An avid user of TikTok and Instagram, Hadis enjoyed sharing her life with her followers on social media.
She was not openly outspoken about women’s liberation, but she posted videos on her TikTok account dancing to the latest viral trend, including to pop music and Iranian singers.
Her social media would not have looked out of place anywhere in the world. Smiling and pouting at the camera, she danced around her room in bright clothing.
She worked as a cashier at a restaurant and loved sharing fashion on her Instagram, styling her hair both with and without her hijab – but only in the safety of her home or other private places.
Hijabs are mandatory in public for all women in Iran, regardless of religion or nationality.
A close friend described her as “always happy and energetic”.
But then violence erupted after another young woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, died in police custody on 16 September. She had been detained, allegedly, for wearing her hijab too loosely.
Outcry over her death has boiled over into some of the biggest protests in the country for years and the anger of a generation of women who had grown used to freedom online poured out on to the streets.
Women removed their head coverings and burnt them as others recorded the scenes on mobile phones, uploading them to social media where they have been shared worldwide.
To make it difficult for protesters, the authorities have restricted internet access in several provinces, according to internet blockage observatory NetBlocks.
Sky News spoke to one of Hadis’s close friends on Instagram and asked if she had been scared when she set off on 21 September.
#حدیث_نجفی در آخرین پیامی که قبل از رفتن به اعتراضها (چهارشنبه ۳۰ شهریور) برای دوستانش فرستاد، میگوید:
«خیلی دوست دارم الان که دارم میرم آخرش وقتی چند سال گذشت خوشحال باشم رفتم تظاهرات و همه چی عوض شده…»#مهسا_امینی #Mahsa_Amini pic.twitter.com/oORoUyTpNW— Farzad Seifikaran (@FSeifikaran) September 26, 2022
“Several nurses… told her family to run, because Hadis had been at the protests so they might also be targeted if the police came,” her friend said.
“The husband of one of Hadis’s sisters works for the Basij [an Iranian paramilitary volunteer militia], so they let him go into the mortuary to do the formal identification. Only him.
“They didn’t let her family see her.”
After two days, the family agreed with authorities not to have a public funeral: “What I tell you now comes from her family,” Hadis’s friend said.
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“On Friday morning they let her crying mother and sisters see her face, to make sure they were burying the right person. There wasn’t a real funeral because of the agreement.
“After she was buried, her sisters Afsoon and Shirin decided to publish her photos and tell people she was shot. The authorities didn’t want people to say she was shot, they were told to say she’d died in a car crash, or a brain injury, that she’d died a natural death.”
Masked forces shoot directly at protesters
Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, has vowed to investigate Ms Amini’s death but said that the authorities would not tolerate any threats to public security.
He said protesters should be “dealt with decisively” and the subsequent crackdown by authorities has been swift, brutal, and violent.
On 21 September, the footage was first shared online of masked men shooting directly and from close range at protesters on Eram Boulevard, where her friend said Hadis was last seen alive.
The location of this clip was verified by Sky News by cross-referencing the car dealership in the background with images of the street shared on Google Maps.
Although Hadis is not in this clip it indicates it is not the only time Iranian police have been accused of using excessive force on protesters.
And Hadis is not the only woman to have been killed. The names of at least four other women alleged to have died in the protests have gone viral in the past week.