Hananeh Kia was a Nowshahr bystander killed during the opening week of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising; her case is one of the early Mazandaran province documented protest deaths.
She was walking near, not in, a protest in central Nowshahr on 21 September 2022 when she was hit by gunfire. The family was kept from the body for days, then forced into a quiet burial. State media floated multiple incompatible explanations; Amnesty and the UN FFM found the state account unsupported.
Mazandaran is not Tehran and the foreign press paid less attention to it. The Mahsa Movement was nationwide. The Caspian coast cities each have their own dead, named locally, often forgotten internationally. Iran International was among the outlets that covered the Mazandaran killings as they happened.
Documenting victims outside Tehran is part of resisting the centralizing reflex of even sympathetic foreign coverage. Persian-language memory is supposed to include the provinces.
What it is
Hananeh Kia (حنانه کیا) was a 23-year-old killed by security forces in Nowshahr, Mazandaran province, on 21 September 2022, in the first days of the Mahsa Movement uprising. She was struck by gunfire while walking near a protest in central Nowshahr; she had not been at the front of the demonstration. The state coroner initially refused to release her body, then pressured the family into a hurried burial. Iranian state media offered no consistent account of the killing. Independent reporting and the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (March 2024) included her case among unlawful killings of protesters and bystanders by Iranian security forces.
Sources
- Amnesty International, deaths of protesters by security forces (December 2022)
- UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran (A/HRC/55/67, March 2024)
- IranWire, Mazandaran protest deaths coverage
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