Melika Dastyab

ملیکا دستیاب

2005–2026

Born: 4 February 2005
Taken: 8 January 2026
Age: 20 years old
From: Kermanshah, Kermanshah

The January 2026 uprising

Kept on this phone only. Nothing is sent.

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Their life

Melika was the eldest child in her family and a final-year economics student at Payame Noor University in Kermanshah. Outside her studies she loved music, poetry and literature.

When her mother died, about two years before Melika was killed, she took on much of the running of the home alongside her father and became the one who looked after her younger sister.

On 8 January 2026, as the protests spread across Kermanshah, it was Melika who asked her father to go out with her, telling him that their lives were worth no more than those of the young people already in the streets.

Dad, our blood is no redder than all these young people's. Because my father is brave, come, let's go to the protests too.

What she told her father on 8 January 2026, as recorded by the Boroumand Center

How the regime took them

That evening, around 9 p.m., Melika was at the protest on Attar Street in Mo'allem Township, Kermanshah, holding her father's hand, when plainclothes agents shot her in the head with a live round. Her father carried her to Taleghani Hospital, where attempts to revive her failed.

She was buried the next morning beside her mother at Shava cemetery in Karand-e Gharb, with a small group of relatives and members of the Yarsan community playing the drums and sorna of the Chamari mourning rite. (The Boroumand Center gives her age as 20, Iran Human Rights as 21 and BBC Persian as 16.)