{"id":403826,"date":"2026-01-12T03:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/403826\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T03:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T03:15:08","slug":"protests-in-iran-heighten-anxieties-among-canadas-diaspora-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/403826\/","title":{"rendered":"Protests in Iran heighten anxieties among Canada\u2019s diaspora community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A rally to voice support for the Iranian people, in Montreal, on Saturday.Quentin Dufranne\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

As a procession of semi-trucks rumbled down Yonge Street in Toronto flying Iran\u2019s<\/a> prerevolution flag and blasting their air horns on Sunday, Rafat Mirlohi looked on with a mix of hope and distress. <\/p>\n

For four days, she has been unable to reach family in Iran while a crackdown on countrywide anti-government protests has killed at least 500 people, according to reports, and shut down phone and internet contact with the outside world. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on there any more,\u201d Ms. Mirlohi said, waving her own Iranian flag \u2212 the sun-and-lion version that flew before the 1978-79 revolution \u2013 as the rally to support Iranian protesters thundered past. \u201cIt\u2019s complete darkness in Iran now. I have lots of family there. When I call, the line just goes silent.\u201d <\/p>\n

The communications blackout has heightened anxieties among Canada\u2019s Iranian community as people try to check on the well-being of friends and relatives in the embattled country. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said on Sunday that at least 10,681 people have been detained over the two weeks of protests and another 544 are dead. The Iranian government has not issued casualty figures. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had other blackouts, but this is the worst ever,\u201d said Nagol Momeni, another Toronto-area resident with family in Iran. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been able to establish a weak land-line connection. This time, it\u2019s zero. I\u2019m stressed and frustrated and can\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran warns U.S. not to launch strikes as activists say protest deaths reach 544<\/a><\/p>\n

Others have had better luck. Kei Esmaeilpour, president of the Civic Association of Iranian Canadians, a non-partisan advocacy group, said he had been in regular contact with people in the country, including a leader of the protest movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what I\u2019m doing these days is transferring messages,\u201d said Mr. Esmaeilpour, who is based in British Columbia but has most of his family back in Iran. \u201cThe message from them is: \u2018Let the international community know. Ask them to help us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The precarious state of the Iranian economy has fuelled the protests, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brothers, both of them are educated engineers, and they cannot find a job for themselves.\u201d Families, he said, aren\u2019t able to afford meat, fruit or bread. \u201cThis is the situation over there. But this is the main question right now: What are people looking for?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re looking for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Images emerging from Iran in recent days show violent attacks on demonstrators, stirring memories of the revolution.<\/p>\n

Iran said on Sunday it would strike back against U.S. military bases and Israel if U.S. President Donald Trump followed through on his threat to attack Iran to protect protesters.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cI observed the demonstrations, the shootings, everything, 47 years ago and this reminds me so much of those days,\u201d said Fakhreddin Jamali, co-founder of the Iranian Heritage Society of Edmonton.<\/p>\n

He has a weekly Thursday Zoom chat with his sisters. Last week, they were all no-shows because of the internet outage. \u201cThe situation is pretty grave and worrisome,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to go.\u201d <\/p>\n

Despite the graphic images coming out of Iran \u2013 of bodies piled high, and of pools of blood in the streets \u2013 Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a human-rights and democracy advocate based in Nova Scotia\u2019s Pictou County, strikes a cautiously optimistic tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrific,\u201d she said. \u201cMy stomach turns, and of course I\u2019m afraid for our brothers and sisters back home in Iran, but my heart\u2019s energy overtakes that, and I have a feeling of hope and excitement for what\u2019s to come \u2013 that the Iranian people will finally get what they\u2019ve been demanding for the last 46 years, which is freedom, democracy, secularism and hopefully a constitution based on human rights and the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

A timeline of the protests in Iran and how they grew<\/a><\/p>\n

While Iran has seen many popular movements since the regime assumed control in the late 1970s, the number of protesters this time is \u201cunprecedented,\u201d Ms. Afshin-Jam said.<\/p>\n

The demonstrations, which began as a response to the economic situation in the country, have grown as they\u2019ve picked up on past grievances. \u201cSome of my father\u2019s relatives, who normally would never come out on the streets, have this time. So that, for me, was very interesting,\u201d she said, adding that she\u2019s been waiting for this day for many years. <\/p>\n

If the regime were to fall, Ms. Afshin-Jam, who left Iran with her family when she was 1, said she\u2019d want to visit the country of her birth. \u201cMy mom passed away a couple of years ago, and I\u2019ve been holding her ashes, and I refuse to bury them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to bury her next to her family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A rally to voice support for the Iranian people, in Montreal, on Saturday.Quentin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-403826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}