Third anniversary of the state killing of Jina Amini – Saqqez under siege, family denied mourning rights

Hengaw – Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Three years after the state killing of Jina Amini, her family remains denied the fundamental right to hold a mourning ceremony at their daughter’s grave. While the world continues to commemorate her with the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Jin, Jiyan, Azadi), security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran continue to threaten, summon, and pressure the family, preventing them and the residents of Saqqez from visiting her grave in the Aichi cemetery.

Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez, was arrested in September 2022 by Iran’s “morality police” in Tehran. She was subjected to severe violence during her arrest and died three days later at Kasra Hospital.

Her death sparked widespread protests in Saqqez and other cities of Kurdistan, which quickly spread across Iran and internationally, becoming the catalyst for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. From the outset, her family has faced continuous harassment — from restrictions on her burial to limits on their movements — and has never been able to mourn freely.

According to records from the Statistics and Documentation Department of Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Saqqez becomes heavily militarized each year as the anniversary of Amini’s death approaches. Security and military forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the army deploy throughout the city and on the roads leading to Aichi cemetery. Streets are controlled through numerous checkpoints, and access routes to the cemetery are completely blocked, disrupting daily life and forcing residents indoors. Arbitrary arrests also rise in the city during this period.

Authorities have repeatedly flooded the Saqqez River (Cham Saqqez) by opening the gates of the Cheragh-Weis dam — a route that many people used on the day of Jina’s funeral to reach the cemetery. By closing main roads and filling the riverbed, they block public access to her grave.

During the first anniversary, restrictions were so severe that for two full days no one was allowed to enter or leave Saqqez. On the same day, a resident of the city, named Fardin Jafari was seriously injured by gunfire from security forces and transferred to Sanandaj for medical treatment. His family, under pressure from intelligence services, was forced to remain silent about his condition.

Amjad Amini, Jina’s father, has been summoned to the intelligence office multiple times over the past three years and subjected to heavy pressure. Officials have warned that any ceremony at Jina’s grave — which has become a symbolic “code” — would trigger harsh reprisals. These threats have extended beyond Jina’s parents and brother to other close relatives. On the first anniversary, her uncle, Safa Aeli, was detained with several residents of Saqqez and interrogated for months at the Sanandaj intelligence detention center.

Aichi cemetery has become a symbolic site for commemorating Jina and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Visits to her grave represent not only mourning but also an act of civil resistance and a demand for justice. For this reason, security agencies aggressively prevent gatherings there, interrogating and prosecuting those who attempt to attend.

Authorities have also made deliberate changes to the layout of Aichi cemetery to restrict public access, ordering municipal workers — under instructions from then-governor Jafar Tavan and the Saqqez intelligence office — to alter its original routes.

By denying families their natural right to mourn, the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to erase Jina’s memory and that of other victims from public consciousness. In Kurdistan, memorial ceremonies have long served as acts of resistance against the state’s policy of enforced forgetting. The authorities employ a range of tactics to obstruct remembrance and undermine its mobilizing power.

The ongoing repression of the Amini family and the people of Saqqez, along with restrictions on ceremonies marking Jina’s killing, are clear violations of fundamental rights and illustrate a policy of systemic repression.

Despite relentless pressure, the Amini family continues to preserve their daughter’s memory and reveal the truth about her death. Although they have been unable to hold a public ceremony, their refusal to remain silent and their accounts of resisting intimidation have become integral to the history of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Jina has become a lasting symbol.

Her killing was both femicide and a state crime, committed under Iran’s repressive laws, including mandatory hijab regulations. Unlike many deaths in detention centers and prisons, Jina’s killing ignited a wave of outrage and a nationwide social movement. Beyond Kurdistan, diverse groups across Iran — women, young people born in the 1990s and 2000s, dissidents, and minorities — identified with her story. For the first time in its modern history, after Jina’s death and the protests at Aichi cemetery, Iran witnessed demonstrations spanning the country’s national/ethnic, gender, and political spectrum.

On the third anniversary of Jina Amini’s state killing, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights honors her memory and reaffirms its solidarity with the Amini family, who have endured unrelenting pressure since her death.