By Hassan Mahmoudi
In the wake of Iran's
12th presidential election on May 19, 2017, there were protests in Iran.
But they went much farther than just the home country. Canadians
held simultaneous protests in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver to denounce
the sham election and the mullahs' ongoing violations of human rights in
Iran.
The protests occurred in Ottawa outside parliament, in
Toronto in Mel Lastman Square, in Montreal at the city center, and in Vancouver
in front of the Art Gallery at the city center. Demonstrators held banners
reading "Stop Executions in Iran," "No to Sham
Election," "No to Rouhani, imposter," "No
to Raisi, mass killer of 1988," "Our vote is regime change,"
"Free all political
prisoners," and "This is a selection,
not an election
One graduate student who helped organize the demonstration
said:
"The Iranian political system is not democratic, and today's
election was neither free nor fair." In Iran, the supreme leader,
Ali Khamenei, stands at the apex of Iran's complex political dictatorship.
He is the most powerful of Iran's four major governing bodies, the
supreme leader and the Council of Guardians, are not elected by the general
population, and power of the president is secondary to the
supreme leader, who
is an unelected head of state.
he speakers led continuous chants, denouncing the fraudulent
election. The protesters said they had various reasons why this protest
is important. A fourth-year student at the York University of Toronto
said there are a lot of issues in Iran, including its deteriorated economy, its
state-sponsored terrorism, its human rights violations, and women's rights.
He noted that the presidential race was between incumbent President
Hassan Rouhani, seeking a second term in office, with 3,000 executions during
his tenure, and Ebrahim Raisi, the candidate closest to the supreme
leader, who was part of a tribunal that oversaw the execution of 30,000
political prisoners in the summer of 1988. Raisi was also the
preferred candidate of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
In Toronto, the demonstration was held in Mel
Lastman Square, where protesters were holding placards condemning the sham
election. This demonstration received wide media and social attention.
During the demonstrations, CTV, a Canadian broadcaster, interviewed one
of the organizers. "Today, our simultaneous protests in Canada over
Iran's elections is in solidarity with the Iranian people," she said.
"The people of Iran deserve a democratic change. They rejected
38 years of this tyrannical rule."
National CBC Television had a live interview
with Mrs. Shahnaz Fallah from the International Coalition of Women against Fundamentalism
(ICWAF) regarding Iran's election, too.
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