Rubina Aminian, a 23-year-old student in Tehran, joined a street protest against the Iranian regime after a day of textiles classes at Shariati College.
If her social media profiles are anything to go by, she appears to be full of optimism and happiness.
The video shows a young Kurdish woman enjoying life: trying on jewelry and lipstick, blowing kisses to the camera.
After graduating from college on Thursday, she joined the crowd but never returned home. By the weekend, her body was buried on an abandoned roadside.
According to Iranian human rights groups, she was shot in the back of the head at close range.
The group said that when her parents traveled to Tehran from their home in Kermanshah to identify her body, they saw many other young people killed in a similar manner.
As Donald Trump continues to threaten military action if the regime kills protesters, evidence is mounting that – despite network outages – the regime has been doing just that for days, growing in resolve and lethality since Thursday.
This weekend, Iran’s news agency carried reports from doctors and activists suggesting the regime had intensified its policies in the middle of last week, with protesters shot in the head and neck on Thursday and Friday nights.
The report also cited an increase in reports of security forces firing on protesters from rooftops.
A surgeon treated six patients who had been shot in the head following protests in Tehran’s Hassan Khan Fort area on Thursday. No one survived.
Footage circulating on social media on Sunday showed a family member holding shredded metal fragments from a bullet removed from a relative’s head.
Medical staff said hospitals were overwhelmed with dead and injured patients and one eye hospital was forced into “crisis mode” due to the number of people who lost one or both eyes.
Security forces were said to be firing bullets and live rounds.
Image source: Vahid/X
At the same time, the regime’s rhetoric hardened, changing the description of demonstrators from “thugs” to “terrorists.”
The country’s attorney general described the protests as “offending God”, which is punishable by death in Iran.
The regime now increasingly views the protests as a military issue rather than a law enforcement issue, according to the Institute for War Studies, a US think tank.
Previously, Iran’s conventional army, Atesh, issued a statement on Saturday, vowing to protect national interests, strategic infrastructure and public property.
Scattered reports from within Iran indicate that the intensity of the crackdown in smaller towns and cities is at least as severe, if not more severe, than in major urban centers such as Tehran.
The regime does not seem to be sparing young people.
After a shooting occurred during a demonstration in Najafabad, parents rushed to a nearby hospital to search for their children’s bodies, medical sources said.
“They took the children and buried them in the same clothes,” the source said. “They said they were martyrs and didn’t need a bath or a shroud.”
Large crowds gathered in Tehran on Saturday night despite evidence of a sharp escalation in violence against protesters – MAHSA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Protesters reportedly took control of some towns until heavy military force quelled the demonstrations.
According to the BBC Persian report, the army sent a large number of reinforcements to the town of Lushan, set up hundreds of cordons on every street and alley, prohibited movement, and conducted checks on all passers-by.
The same situation was reported in Challes, which had seen large protests but has been under martial law since Saturday with a 6pm curfew. “Security forces armed with machine guns were stationed on all streets,” the report said.
Large crowds attended demonstrations on Saturday night despite evidence of a sharp escalation in violence against protesters.
On Sunday, Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urged Iranians to continue the crackdown, suggesting the regime was losing the manpower and will to sustain the crackdown.
“For the third night in a row, you have severely weakened Khamenei’s repressive apparatus and his regime,” he said.
“Credible reports indicate that the Islamic Republic is facing a severe shortage of mercenaries to fight millions of people on the streets, and that many armed and security forces have abandoned their posts or disobeyed orders.”
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urges Iranians to continue protests
He called for another protest starting at 6pm on Sunday but urged demonstrators to continue to gather in groups.
“Do not separate from others or crowds; do not use alleyways where life may be at risk.”
There is evidence that repression continued even after death.
According to Iranian human rights groups, when Rubina Aminian’s parents arrived in Tehran, they were initially told not to take their daughter’s body home.
They eventually convinced authorities to release her body, but when they returned to the far west of the country, they found their house surrounded by intelligence agents.
When they went to the mosque to request a funeral, they were told that such services had been banned.
Rubina was eventually buried beside a road between Kermanshah and Kamiyaran.
A source close to the family described her as “a young woman with a joy for life and a passion for fashion and clothing design whose dreams were buried by the Islamic Republic’s violent repression.”
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