Late at night on Jan. 10, Dr. Alireza Golchini was arrested by security forces in the city of Qazvin, Iran.
His cousin Nima Golchini, who lives in Toronto, says Alireza was beaten up and his ribs broken in front of his wife and son.
“You’re doing your practice like anybody else and they come towards you, seven, eight people. He’s not a murderer, he is not a thief. He’s a doctor of the country. And they treated him like this,” Nima said.
For 48 hours, his family didn’t know where he had been taken.
Finally, a call came in. Alireza was in prison. “He said to family that ‘I’m alive’ and that’s it, the phone conversation disconnected,” Nima said. “It was less than a couple of seconds.”
Though his cousin has since been released pending trial, Nima is one of many Canadians who have endured long waits to learn the fate of relatives who have been arrested or gone missing in the wake of a violent crackdown on protests during which at least 7,000 people were killed, rights groups say.
Iranians took to the streets in late December, at first protesting the state of the economy. But the demonstrations evolved into a movement calling for the end of the Islamic regime. The protests spread across the country until the government cracked down in early January amid a phone and internet blackout. Earlier this week families took part in mourning ceremonies marking 40 days since thousands were killed.
Alireza Golchini has a specialty in surgical oncology. During the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, he offered to treat injured protesters for free.
He was barred from working in state hospitals after that. But that didn’t deter him from once again offering help through a post on social media during the January protests.
Nima Golchini wasn’t surprised to see his cousin’s post.
“He’s a brave man. He believes in what he has sworn, to cure the people,” Nima said.
There are conflicting reports on how many people died when the government started firing on the protesters. But the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has historically been accurate in counting deaths during previous rounds of unrest in Iran, has said the death toll is at more than 7,000, and has close to 12,000 additional cases under review.
Iran’s only official statement on the death toll was a state broadcast Jan. 21 that said 3,117 people were killed.
Nima was told that Alireza was able to treat about 45 people before he was arrested. Some had broken bones. Others had bullet wounds that needed surgery.
For those efforts, Alireza spent 22 days in jail, says Nima. The first 12 were spent in solitary confinement where Alireza was interrogated three times a day about his travels, about who he treated and why he did it for free, Nima says. After that he was put into an area with around 200 other people jailed following the protests.
He’s back at home but still awaiting his court date and worried about what sentence he might face. Meanwhile, all of his equipment and documents — including his passport — were seized and he’s not allowed to work or travel, says Nima, adding that his cousin says he’s scared about what’s next.
Hossein Raeesi, a human rights lawyer originally from Iran, lives in Canada now because his work there defending women and religious minorities made him a target for the regime.
He says he gets snippets of information from inside Iran when communications open up, and that he’s hearing many more stories of medical workers being targeted.
“Unfortunately, the authority and [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] try to attack clinics, doctor’s offices, and hospitals that have been providing some services to the wounded people.”
He estimates more than 50,000 people were arrested after the protests, a number that’s being used by The Human Rights Activists News Agency, too. He says he’s worried that the prisoners won’t get access to justice.
“They have to choose a lawyer from the list confirmed by the head of judiciary… they don’t want to allow people that …have been arrested to access to their own lawyers,” Raeesi said. “Even if you choose someone from that list, you have no chance to visit with him or her. Those lawyers also have no access to the file.”
Raeesi says Canada has a unique role as one of the world’s human-rights defenders, and could help to establish a special international criminal court to hold the Iranian regime accountable.
Nima Golchini joined hundreds of thousands of others on the streets of Toronto on Feb. 14 calling on the Canadian and international governments to step in and help the people of Iran.
“The help that we want is not just empty words like condemning this brutal massacre. Do something about it.”
CBC asked Global Affairs Canada whether it supports regime change in Iran. In an email it didn’t answer that question directly but did state, among other things, that Canada “strongly condemns the killing of protestors, the use of violence, arbitrary arrests, and intimidation tactics by the Iranian regime against its own people.”
It directed CBC to past statements like the one in early February when Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand announced additional sanctions against seven people connected to the Iranian government. In January, Canada joined G7 Foreign Ministers in condemning Iran’s “brutal repression of the Iranian people.”
Leila Afshari joined protests in Vancouver, and is clear on the help she’s hoping will come soon.
“I’m waiting, counting, when Trump is gonna attack this government because it’s the only way.” she says. “My country is not gonna be free. There has to be an end to this regime.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted that he could take military action against Iran if the negotiations happening now about Iran’s nuclear program aren’t productive.
It’s personal for Afshari, because her brother Ehsan Afshari went missing after joining the protests on Jan. 8.
“My parents, they keep calling my brother. After 9:30 p.m., his phone was shut, and they didn’t reach him anymore,” Afshari said.
He was missing for 12 days. Finally their mother found him at the Kahrizak, a makeshift morgue.
Afshari says he had two bullets in his stomach and his face and body were badly bruised.
“Just they identified him by this tattoo on his arm,” Afshari said through tears.
Ehsan had a history of activism. In 2009, he made a music video as a tribute to Neda Agha Sultan, who was shot that year at a protest in Tehran and whose name became synonymous with the protest movement.
“He wasn’t afraid to speak up,” Afshari said. “He was really brave.”
But the video put him in danger so he went to live in Sweden.
“After 16 years he was really homesick and he just wanted to visit my parents,” Afshari said.
An estimated 350,000 people rally in Toronto in support of Iran protests, police say
That’s why he was in Iran this January when the protests were growing. Afshari says she wasn’t surprised he joined in.
“He is always thinking that maybe that kind of stuff will help our country become free.”
“I don’t know how he’s been killed, tortured…,” Afshari said. “There is no truth coming from that government. It’s a big mystery.”
Until regime change happens, she says she doesn’t even want to have a funeral for her brother.
“I’m just waiting. I am hoping very soon, praying for this government to collapse,” she said. “After that, maybe I could say goodbye to my brother.”
