Vehicles pass by a large patriotic banner depicting the Iranian flag on Enghelab Square in Tehran on Wednesday. Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets and have a faced a violent crackdown in response.ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
A Canadian has been killed by Iran’s authorities, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on Thursday, as Iranian Canadians said their family members are sheltering inside in fear amid a ubiquitous military presence in Tehran.
Thousands of Iranians who took to the streets across the country in protest against the theocratic regime in recent weeks have faced a violent crackdown in response, with at least 2,500 protesters killed, according to U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
On Thursday in a post on X, Ms. Anand said she had “just learned that a Canadian citizen has died in Iran at the hands of the Iranian authorities.”
“Our consular officials are in contact with the victim’s family in Canada and my deepest condolences are with them at this time,” she said.
Global Affairs declined to give further details about the circumstances of the Canadian’s death or their identity, citing privacy reasons.
“Peaceful protests by the Iranian people – asking that their voices be heard in the face of the Iranian regime’s repression and ongoing human-rights violations – has led the regime to flagrantly disregard human life,” Ms. Anand added on X.
The government of Iran has partly lifted the communications blackout it imposed on Jan. 8, allowing short outgoing phone calls in recent days.
Iranian Canadians, desperate for news of their loved ones, say they have learned, in snatched conversations with family members, that they are afraid to venture out onto the streets of the capital, as people are being shot and detained by the military.
They said their friends and family are sheltering indoors in what one described as martial law, with government security forces patrolling the streets and even present in hospitals.
Yasaman, a Toronto resident, learned that her aunt had died in the protests from WhatsApp messages a relative was able to send her on Wednesday.
Her aunt, a widow with two grown sons, was shot in the leg in Tehran and did not receive medical treatment, according to the relative’s messages. She was able to call one of her sons, but he couldn’t find her. He later retrieved her body and buried her in another city.
The Globe and Mail reviewed the texts and is identifying Yasaman only by her first name to protect her relatives.
“Now, they’re on the streets with machine guns and armoured vehicles. How can you fight them with your bare hands,” the relative in Iran said in a message.
“It’s really heartbreaking what we see this time,” Yasaman said.
Another resident of Toronto, whose mother took part in the protests, said her family in Iran is too afraid to speak frankly by phone about unfolding events, fearing that calls outside the country are being tapped by the regime.
She said she had not heard from her parents until a few days ago when she held a brief conversation with her mother, who took part in the first night of protests.
Huge protests in Iran have galvanized exiled foes of the authorities but despite their hatred of the ruling clerics, a bitter schism dating to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution still afflicts the leading opposition factions.
Reuters
Her mother, who is a Canadian citizen, had told her that the heavy military presence on the streets meant it was now too risky to go out. Like many others, she was sheltering in her home.
“She said it’s too dangerous outside, and that she has stopped going out. There’s a curfew, and after 6 p.m. there are regime forces that are on the street,” she said. She said the cost of already expensive groceries in Tehran had “gone up exponentially” since the protests began, with queues for cooking oil.
The Globe is not identifying the Toronto woman and her family because they fear for their safety,
The federal government this week advised Canadians in Iran to leave the country immediately, warning that foreign and dual nationals have been detained. Iran’s land borders with Turkey and Armenia are still open, although external flights are limited.
Ghazal Shokri, a Canadian Iranian management consultant and pro-democracy activist whose family, including her mother and sister, are in Tehran, said she is “very desperate.”
“I had a very short call with mom and my sister. The military is on every alley, and these days, they are not even safe to go out for their daily food shopping,” she said.
“They are saying, ‘I’m desperate.’ They are like jailed in our house, with no connection to the outside,” Ms. Shokri said.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he had been told that killings in Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests were subsiding and that he believed there was currently no plan for large-scale executions, even as tensions between Tehran and Washington remained high.
Reuters
Negar Mojtahedi, an Iranian Canadian who is a correspondent for pro-democracy website Iran International and host of its Eye for Iran podcast, said she had spoken this week to friends in Iran, and people who had managed to leave the country, who said there was now martial law on the streets.
“I have a friend whose mother and father are still in Iran, and she basically talked in code, because, you know, everything’s being tapped. But she did find out that, unfortunately, three of her childhood friends have been killed and another one has been arrested.”
She said one Canadian resident she knew had managed to get a flight out on Sunday but in Tehran people were afraid to leave their homes.
“It’s not just protesters. They’re indiscriminately hitting people. So that’s why people are barricading themselves inside,” she said. “Soon people are going to run out of food. They’re going to run out of drugs, medication.”
She said she had been told that security personnel were even present in some hospitals where protesters, injured by government forces, are being treated.
There are 3,054 Canadians and permanent residents of Canada registered as being in Iran, according to Global Affairs. But registration is voluntary so there may be more Canadians in the country.
Liberal MP Ali Ehsassi, whose father was an Iranian diplomat while the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was in power, lived in Iran as a boy, including during the 1979 revolution.
He said he had spoken to about 10 Iranians since the beginning of the protests, which he said were “very, very widespread in terms of intensity.”
“The reality that they shut down access to social media and the internet for as long as they did was very different than anything we experienced in the past. All the information that’s emerging is very, very disconcerting,” he said.
“The international community have never really experienced something like this where you see a country just mow down protesters and shut the country off from the world,” he said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Ali Ehsassi as a Conservative MP. He is a Liberal MP.