Nika Shakeri's Family: Authorities Have Blocked Access to Nika's Burial Site

As the second anniversary of Nika Shakeri's death approaches, the teenage protester who died during the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests, her family reports that authorities have blocked access to the roads leading to her burial site. According to these reports, officials are not allowing Nika's family to enter the cemetery or visit her grave. Nika Shakeri was one of the hundreds of protesters killed during the protests following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini while in custody of the morality police in 2022, and government entities forced her family to bury her in a remote village in Khorramabad, Lorestan. Nasrin Shakeri, Nika's mother, stated on Instagram that despite not calling for a memorial ceremony to avoid "arrests and harassment" of the public, "from early morning, numerous government agents have blocked the Visian road and the Hayat al-Ghayb cemetery from all sides and are not allowing anyone to pass." Atash Shakeri, Nika's aunt, also posted a similar message indicating that the roads leading to Hayat al-Ghayb cemetery will remain closed until Saturday of the following week, one day after the anniversary of Nika's death. According to her, "the movement of people in the area has been disrupted, burial ceremonies in the entire region have been canceled by the intelligence services, and people's lives have been disrupted." Atash Shakeri emphasized that "the family has no right to enter the area and visit the grave." On the second anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini's death, a similar situation occurred at the Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, where she is buried, and officials prevented her family members from leaving to visit her grave and commemorate the memory of this young woman. Nika Shakeri, 17, disappeared on the evening of September 20, 2022, during the first protests of "Women, Life, Freedom" in Keshavarz Boulevard, Tehran, and after eight days, her body was handed over to her family. Nasrin Shakeri, Nika's mother, stated about two weeks later in a video message exclusively provided to Radio Farda that according to the forensic report, the cause of her daughter's death was "multiple blows from a hard object" to her head. However, the narrative from the Islamic Republic's news outlets during the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests was that Nika Shakeri jumped from a half-finished building near her aunt Atash Shakeri's house, where she lived, and committed suicide. The BBC World Service reported on April 29, 2024, that they had obtained a "very confidential document" from the Islamic Republic of Iran, indicating that Nika Shakeri was subjected to "sexual harassment" and killed after being arrested by security forces.