Toronto: Protesters gathered on Riverside Drive in Windsor to show support for fellow Iranians who were killed after participating in anti-government protests in Iran. The group gathered with signs by the side of the road of Windsor trying to raise awareness about the executions.
One of the Windsor protesters, Reza Alirazaee, worse a noose around his head connected to a sign that said STOP in bright red. “It’s supposed to be a symbolic sign representing the executions happening in Iran right now,” he said.
Alirazaee moved to Canada from Iran nine years ago, when he was 14, and said he needs to speak for the Iranian people. “We gathered here to be the voice of all Iranians in Iran who have been protesting for the past almost 90 days now,” he said.
Alirazaee said the Windsor protest was sparked after two men in Iran were hanged this week, for participating in the countrywide protests brought on by the Sept. 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
The morality police in Iran enforces the country’s morality rules, which date back to the end of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They include rules about dressing modestly in public, wearing the hijab, and how men and women interact in public spaces.
The protests, which were initially concentrated in the Kurdish region of Iran where Amini was from, have spread across the country and escalated into calls to overthrow Iran’s ruling clerics. At least 426 people have been killed and more than 17,400 arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the unrest. It says at least 55 members of the security forces have been killed.