Story
Sarina Esmailzadeh was a vibrant 16-year-old Iranian vlogger and content creator, born in 2006. Raised by her mother alongside an older brother after her father's early death, she was a gifted student in Karaj, fluent in English and French. Sarina had innocent dreams of being a YouTube content creator, posting videos about mundane events like family trips and making pizza. Crucially, her videos also featured her keen thoughts on the situation of Iranian women and Iranians as a whole under authoritarian rule. She often appeared unveiled in her self-produced videos, portraying a colorful personality that defied Iran's repressive religious and cultural laws. Her videos expressed her pain at seeing peers in other countries enjoying life and freedom, highlighting the deprivation felt by many Iranian youth due to internet restrictions and the regime's control. She famously stated, "Nothing feels better than freedom" after school exams and noted, "We're not like the previous generation 20 years ago who didn't know what life was like outside Iran." In her last known video on Telegram, she sang along to Hozier's "Take Me to Church," lamenting, "My homeland feels like being in exile."
In September 2022, moved by the death of Mahsa Amini, Sarina joined the protests against the authoritarian regime. On September 23, 2022, she was tragically murdered by Iranian authorities during these protests in the Gohardasht neighborhood of Karaj, Alborz province. According to human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, she died from severe head injuries after being repeatedly struck with a baton by security forces. Her family was informed of her death by her friends and subsequently faced immense pressure from security and intelligence agents to remain silent and endorse the authorities' fabricated narrative that she died by suicide after jumping from a building. This cover-up included a disputed video aired by Tasnim News Agency featuring her mother, the confiscation of her death certificate, monitoring of family phones, and denial of access to her case file for their lawyer. Her personal online accounts were manipulated post-mortem to portray her as depressed, while her YouTube channel remained a testament to her lively spirit. Sarina's death, like Mahsa Amini's, marked a point-of-no-return for many Iranians, inspiring further acts of disobedience and protest, and she became a symbol of "perished youth and repressed joy." Her legacy is honored through murals, recognition by Amnesty International UK on her birthday, and a tribute song by the Irish rock band U2.