Baloch child Seyed Youssef Hashemi killed by Iranian border forces
Hengaw – Monday, June 15, 2026
Seyed Youssef Hashemi, a 17-year-old Baloch boy from Zahedan who lacked identity documents and had previously been unlawfully deported to Afghanistan, was killed by direct fire from Iranian border forces while attempting to return to his hometown.
According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, forces stationed at the Haji Sharif border outpost near Zabol shot and killed Seyed Youssef Hashemi on June 12, 2026, without prior warning.
The child had previously been detained and deported to Afghanistan because he lacked identity documents, a right from which large numbers of Baloch residents are systematically deprived by Iranian authorities.
The Baloch media outlet Haalvsh reported that Seyed Youssef had crossed back into Iran in an attempt to return home and reunite with his family when he was fatally shot by government forces.
Following the killing, his body was transferred to a hospital in Zabol. Authorities initially refused to hand over his remains to the family and stated that they intended to transfer the body to Afghanistan. After two days of persistent follow-up by relatives, the body was finally released on Sunday, June 14. He was later buried at Nalouki Cheshmeh Ziarat Cemetery in Zahedan beside his father’s grave.
Tens of thousands of Baloch residents in Sistan and Baluchestan Province remain without birth certificates despite being native to the region and having lived there for decades. This structural deprivation, rooted in discriminatory ethnic and religious policies, denies many access to education, healthcare, and other fundamental rights while exposing them to arbitrary detention and deportation as “foreign nationals.”
The fatal shooting of an unarmed 17-year-old child who posed no immediate threat to security forces constitutes a clear violation of Iran’s law governing the use of firearms, international principles of necessity and proportionality in the use of force, Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a nationality and legal identity.
