Sarina Esmailzadeh

On 23 September 2022, Iranian teenager Sarina Esmailzadeh died of severe beating on the head by security forces during the Mahsa Amini protests in Karaj, Alborz province, Iran, according to human rights organizations. She was 16 years old.

The local Justice Department denied any responsibility for her death, claiming that she died by suicide after jumping from the rooftop of a building, and similar claims were made by the authorities about 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who had also attended the protests and died under suspicious circumstances.

After their deaths, pictures of Shakarami and Esmailzadeh appeared on banners during protests and on posters in Iranian cities. Videos created by Esmailzadeh were shared online after her death,

Background Sarina Esmailzadeh was born in 2006. In a YouTube video posted on May 22, she talked about restrictions on women in Iran and a need for freedom. In her last video on Telegram, she sang along to "Take Me to Church" by Hozier, and said, "My homeland feels like being in exile". in the Gohardasht neighborhood of Karaj, near her language school where protests were taking place. According to an IHR source, she died before she could be taken anywhere for treatment. Some of her pinned messages were deleted as well. Her Instagram page was initially deleted after her death, but later 13 pages were created in her name, one with her original ID without her old posts. Only her YouTube channel shows an image of a lively happy teenager who loved dancing, music and pizza with a concern for freedom.

Legacy In 2023, Amnesty International UK honored what would have been her seventeenth birthday on 2 July.

In 2026, Irish rock band U2 released the EP Days of Ash. It includes "Song of the Future", which was written as a tribute to Sarina Esmailzadeh.