A Spirited Young Woman Lost to Oppression
Negin Abdolmaleki, a 21-year-old from Qorveh, a city in the western province of Kurdistan, was a bright and dedicated biomedical engineering student at Hamedan University of Technology, located in the west of Iran.
Known for her courage, Negin Abdolmaleki joined the nationwide protests in 2022, driven by a deep desire to see her homeland freed from oppression.
On October 12, 2022, during a protest in the city of Hamedan, Negin was brutally beaten by security forces. She suffered multiple blows to her head with batons, resulting in severe bleeding. Despite her injuries, Negin managed to return to her dormitory. Tragically, however, the bleeding was so severe that she lost her life shortly after that.
To cover up the truth, security forces stormed the university dormitory. They threatened her classmates, who had witnessed the attack, as well as Negin’s family, ordering them to claim that she had died due to food poisoning from expired canned fish. This fabrication was meant to erase the brutal reality of her death and prevent further unrest.
Outraged by her death and the injustice surrounding it, the Hamedan University of Technology students gathered in protest, demanding accountability for the life that had been cut short simply because she longed for freedom.
