Khamenei Shelled Iranian Students. Rubina Aminian, 23, Struck by Bullet From Behind


A 23-year-old student was shot in the head “from close range” during the anti-government protests in Iran, a human rights group has said.

Rubina Aminian attended Shariati College in Iran’s capital, Tehran, where she studied textile and fashion design. She is one of the only people killed in the recent demonstrations to be identified.

Aminian was killed on Thursday after joining a protest after leaving the college, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights group.

“Sources close to Rubina’s family, citing eyewitnesses, told Iran Human Rights that the young Kurdish woman from Marivan was shot from close range from behind, with the bullet striking her head,” the group said in a statement.

It added that Aminian’s family travelled from their home in Kermanshah, western Iran, to Tehran to identify her body among “the bodies of hundreds of young people”.

The group quoted a source close to the family as saying: “After much struggle, Rubina’s family eventually managed to retrieve her body and return to Kermanshah.

“However, upon arrival, they found that intelligence forces had surrounded their home and that they were not allowed to bury her.”

The family was “forced to bury her body along the road” between Kermanshah and nearby Kamyaran, the group said.

Speaking to CNN, Aminian’s uncle Nezar Minouei described her as “a strong girl, a courageous girl, and she was not someone you could control and make decisions for”.

“She fought for things she knew were right and fought hard. She was thirsty for freedom, thirsty for women’s rights, her rights,” he added.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has estimated that at least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations.

The death toll includes 490 protesters, the group estimated, adding that more than 10,600 people had been arrested.

#khamenei #students #aminian #struck #bullet

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Campus Crackdown: Trump’s New Voter ID Lab

Trump’s people finally found a place where “election integrity” can’t talk back: freshmen dorms. While the SAVE America Act crawls through Congress, the administration is already doing the quiet work — cutting off the money, scaring the institutions, and calling it “protecting democracy.” The Education Department has barred colleges from using Federal Work Study to pay low‑income students for voter registration or basic civic work, scrapping Biden‑era guidance that explicitly allowed nonpartisan get‑out‑the‑vote jobs and rebranding them as “political activity.” Translation: if you’re poor and in school, you can still clean the dining hall for aid — you just can’t be paid to hand your classmates a registration form.

At the same time, the department is warning colleges not to “aid and abet” fraud, telling them they may “limit” who gets voter registration forms, and launching a FERPA probe into Tufts’ National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement — the main dataset schools use to figure out whether their students actually vote. One letter told more than 1,000 university presidents to stop using NSLVE reports or risk their own investigations; the National Student Clearinghouse has already walked away from the project, and Tufts has delayed its 2024 turnout report until the feds are done leaning on them. Official line: this is about privacy and the “integrity” of records. Practical effect: the one large, nonpartisan tool for measuring student voting is frozen right before a midterm where youth turnout could decide control of Congress.

On paper, Republicans say they’re not afraid of young voters, just of “young voters who only hear one side of the story,” and they’re pushing voter ID as “common sense.” In practice, more than a dozen mostly red states already restrict campus IDs at the polls, with Florida, New Hampshire and Indiana tightening rules further, and a Trump‑backed bill that would codify strict citizenship and ID checks into federal law. Youth turnout has risen since 2016 — and on campuses it’s higher than among the broader 18–29 crowd — which is exactly why the federal message to colleges now is: stop paying students to help each other vote, hand fewer registration forms to fewer people, and don’t you dare use your own voting data without clearing it with Washington first.

The beauty of this design is that nobody has to say “we’re suppressing student votes.” You just redefine voter registration as political work, redefine data as a privacy problem, and redefine colleges as potential fraud accomplices until they back off anything that smells like civic engagement. If turnout drops, it’s not the administration’s fault — it’s “compliance,” “statute” and “neutral enforcement.”

And if you’re a 19‑year‑old trying to vote in your first midterm, the lesson is simple: the same federal government that tells you to be a “responsible citizen” is quietly making sure no one on your campus is paid to help you act like one.

#USA #elections #Trump #students #voterSuppression #highered #workstudy #FERPA #youthvote #fakeDemocracy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Indian Government vs Students: Who Will Hang Tough?


When thousands of unarmed students marched toward the Indian Parliament building last month in a rare challenge to the government, they were met by a wall of riot police officers determined to stop them.

Officials had blocked internet in the area, initially slowing the emergence of details of the crackdown. But videos taken by protesters and witnesses began circulating, revealing that security forces beat people with sticks and fired tear gas and pellet guns at them. The footage led to accusations of excessive force being wielded against peaceful demonstrators.

The New York Times has verified and analyzed images and video footage shared by protesters, along with witness accounts, to examine how the Delhi Police, the Rapid Action Force and other paramilitary forces handled the crowds. Several Times reporters were also present at the scene on July 20, the day of the march.

The evidence suggests that security forces exceeded many guidelines for law enforcement in peaceful demonstrations established by the United Nations and also those from India’s home ministry, which state that force “should be used when it is absolutely necessary, it should be minimum and proportional to the situation.”

While police brutality is not unusual in India, especially against minority groups, there was public outrage over how the authorities repressed a vast crowd of young people demanding accountability for the nation’s flawed education system. Protest organizers said at least 150 participants were hospitalized and many more injured. Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house of Parliament, has condemned the use of “brute” force, saying, “the assault on students is a stain on our democratic country.”

The Delhi Police has said that no permission had been sought or granted for the march, which demonstrators called for after several weeks of peaceful protest at a site near Parliament.

The police said the march was “strictly prohibited” and that force had been used as a last resort. They said that 118 police personnel had been injured and that 70 people had been detained for violations of law and order.

The Delhi Police did not respond to requests for comment on the video findings documented by The Times.

Security forces used lathis — long batons made out of bamboo or polycarbonate — to hit protesters, a tactic commonly used to control crowds if they become unruly and don’t respond to whistles or warnings delivered over loudspeakers. Security forces are advised to avoid overarm strikes and to hit people on their arms or legs, according to U.N. guidelines. But multiple accounts and videos verified by The Times appear to show police personnel, and a man in plainclothes, aiming for protesters’ torsos.

Tear gas, which irritates the eyes, throat and lungs, was widely used to break up large crowds gathered in the areas adjacent to the designated protest site.

U.N. guidelines say tear gas should never be used to disperse peaceful protesters. Typically, the canisters should be fired in an arc and not directly toward a crowd, but videos verified by The Times showed security forces releasing tear gas by hand at a lower trajectory.

Many protesters who were detained or targeted by security forces in Delhi or elsewhere have filed petitions with the Supreme Court, accusing the security forces of brutality and seeking punishment for those involved.

The leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party — a once satirical group that led the youth movement — have urged protesters to preserve videos and photos as evidence, saying that dozens of people detained could face charges despite government assurances that they would not be.

While hearing petitions filed by protesters on July 28, the Supreme Court of India said that there should be an “evidence-based inquiry” into whether excessive force was used.

#students #indian #parliament #revolution

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸