Ali Nejati's family in Iran has been unreachable for the last couple of weeks and what began as missed calls has become a daily dread Nejati cannot escape.
The recent Humber Polytechnic PR graduate said he was an activist back in Iran which is part of the reason why he had to flee the country before something happened to him.
“What's happening in Iran is tragic and some people might call it the Iranian Holocaust, and the saddest part is, by its own government,” he said.
Nejati said he comes from a very small town in Iran where no protests ever happen but this time it is different, this time everyone is standing shoulder to shoulder.
“It’s tough for us, it’s tough for everyone. We’re devastated, we’re heartbroken and we’re frustrated. [For m]e and my friends the same job that we do on a regular day now takes hours to do. I’m not even functioning at my work. We’re all broken,” he said.
Nejati said it’s the community that they have built here that is keeping them strong. Every rally where people come together to voice their struggles is what brings them together.
Mason Ghafghazi, an engineering professor at University of Toronto who is of Iranian descent, said Iran is a theocracy, a dictatorship based on the Sharia with the facade of a democracy.
Sharia refers to the divine counsel that Muslims follow to live moral lives and grow close to God.
“There is no real choice. The regime has few hundred people who they circulate in and out of positions. Every four years they give a choice to people to pick among four people who are not really different,” he said, describing it as a choice between bad or worse
Ghafghazi has family back in Iran and said he still can’t get in contact. He said there has started to be intermittent internet, but people can only get online for minutes.
“It’s random who can. It depends on what type of software and VPNs they manage to find and use. There is no open internet in Iran,” he said.
Ghafghazi believes internet access is a right because it provides access to information and keeping people in the dark is a violation of human rights.
He said the current number of killings is 16,500 in a span of three days and they are still shooting people point blank.
“They have been executing injured people in hospitals. There’s very solid evidence of that. I have seen videos of chemical weaponry mounted on trucks being paraded through streets,” Ghafghaz said.
He said they threaten to spray people with these chemicals if they rise again.
Ghafghazi said it has been really hard for him. He said everyone knows someone who has been killed.
The day before the interview he found out a childhood friend of his was murdered.
“Pharmacies are refusing to sell medications, bandages, gauze and stuff, under pressure from the government, so a lot of the injured cannot go to the hospitals because they get arrested,” he said.
Ghafghazi said the number of people blinded by direct pellet shots to the eyes is 8,000 and these assessments are based on previous uprisings.
He said it is sad and funny that Iranians are now turning to U.S. President Donald Trump for help.
Ghafghazi said the people he’s managed to connect with in Iran are saying it’s the only hope Iranians have right now. “You’re in a bad place when Trump’s your only hope,” he said.
He said an external power that can balance people’s power with the regime can start a revolution.
Ghafghazi said this has led to protests and gatherings outside U.S. embassies and consulates everywhere.
He compares the current state of things in Iran to the time of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“They’re literally the same, it’s the same ideology, the same people. They have taken over the country and they’re very happy to kill people. They mow them down with machine guns,” Ghafghazi said.
Kourosh Doustshenas, who is the spokesperson for the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims, said this first started with a demonstration where people were gunned down for protesting the rapidly rising cost of living in Iran.
Doustshenas said that within 48 hours of the beginning of the protests, there were reports of thousands of people having been massacred showing Iran’s brutality in the past as well.
He said he believes that the downing of the Ukrainian aircraft in January 2020 was also not an accident but a well-planned mass-murder.
“So, we know that this regime is capable doing any kind of criminal behaviour including killing innocent people in the flames and using people as a human shield and prosecuting and murdering thousands and thousands of people,” Doustshenas said.
He said what makes it even worse is that now they have confiscated the bodies of the deceased and are not allowing families to cremate their loved ones properly.
“They're charging people for the bullet they have used to kill people saying you have to pay the X amount of dollars for the bullet we used to kill your loved ones otherwise we are not giving you the body,” Doustshenas said.
He said he finds it hard to believe that country can kill its own citizens in this way.
