‘Mahsa Amini’ sung in Ottawa during rally in support of Iranians protesting against oppression

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The name Mahsa Amini echoed through the streets of downtown Ottawa on Sunday, shouted over and over again by members of the Iranian community who came out in their hundreds to join a wave of protests and calls for change, from inside and outside Iran, that broke out in after Amini’s death.

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The 22-year-old died following her arrest by Iran’s “morality police”, who allegedly enforced rules in the country on how compulsory hijab should be worn.

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“I was better dressed than I usually am dressed in Iran,” said Rosa Kheirandish, who was born in Iran and spent much of her life in the country before returning to Canada in 2020.

“The way he died. Like, innocent… and the brutality of it,” Kheirandish said. “I can’t describe it. He makes my head explode.”

Kheirandish, one of the organizers of Sunday’s march and rally downtown, said the reason she and other protesters are fighting goes far beyond the hijab rules women are subjected to in the city. your country of origin. In the days after Amini’s death, dozens of protesters were killed and “right now, we are fighting for our lives and we want the government to step down,” Kheirandish said.

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Maryam Fatahi, 42, attended Sunday’s rally with plans to cut her hair, an act of defiance against the Islamic Republic’s oppressive regime by women from around the world following Amini’s death. For Fatahi, it is a gesture of solidarity with Iranian women and others who have been killed by police in the country she left six years ago.

“It’s nothing,” he said, of the curls he would later cut off. “People have been killed in Iran by the regime, by the brutal regime, by the dictatorial regime. It’s nothing, it’s just hair… what they’re doing in Iran these days. My hair is nothing.”

Goldie Ghamari, the Carleton MPP in Ottawa, was in the protest crowd on Sunday, to be a voice for people in the country she was born in, who are “fighting for freedom and democracy,” she said.

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“The illegitimate and terrorist Islamic regime in Iran is shutting down the internet, killing people,” Ghamari said.

The MPP said it would love to see the federal government take a stronger stand against what is happening in Iran. It was a sentiment shared by several protest attendees who spoke to this newspaper on Sunday.

Azin Rezaeian and Sam, who did not want to share their last name out of concern for their family’s safety in Iran, called on Canada to sever relations with Iranian diplomats, other regime representatives and lobbyists and support Internet access within the country. .

Many of those who participated in the protest hid their identities with medical masks or sunglasses, concerned for the safety of their loved ones in Iran and the reaction of a regime whose reach does not stop at the country’s borders.

One such protester said she feels the Canadian government, which benefits from skilled migration from Iran to Canada, needs to back up its human rights talk with action.

“Many people here, we have left our country, but now our heart is there,” he said, his voice cracking. “Our sisters are being killed and we can’t do anything (about it).”