Killing of Minoo Majidi

Minoo Majidi was an Iranian woman of Kurdish ethnicity who was born in 1960 in a Yarsan family, in the city of Qasr-e Shirin. She lived in the city of Kermanshah with her husband and three children.[2]

Following the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the Morality Police, a wave of anti-regime protests began in Saqqez —Mahsa Amini's place of birth and burial— which quickly spread across Iran and all around the world.[3][4] Minoo Majidi was one of the protesters on the streets of Kermanshah who was shot and killed by the forces of the Islamic Republic on 20 September 2022.[5][6]

The funeral ceremony of Majidi was held on 22 September 2022 at the Mina Abad Cemetery in Kermanshah and turned into an anti-government demonstration.[7][8][9] The women present at the ceremony took off their hijab as a sign of protest and chanted slogans like "Woman, Life, Freedom" and anti-regime slogans.[10][11][12]

Days after the burial of Majidi, in which women unveiled and the attendees chanted in protest, a photo of her daughter went viral.[13][14] In the photo, her daughter stands beside her mother's grave with her bare shaved head, holding her own hair, and staring into the camera in unbending defiance.[15][16] The Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper published a picture of Majidi's daughter at her mother's grave and called it a new symbol of Iranian women's struggle for freedom.[17]