Hamed Esmaeilion with wife Parisa and
daughter Reera on her ninth birthday.
Courtesy Hamed Esmaeilion
Hamed Esmaeilion has to watch his back wherever he goes — unable to escape the oppressive and violent regime that rules his homeland of Iran, even when he’s in Canada. When he first arrived in 2010 with his wife Parisa and daughter Reera, Esmaeilion thought he had come to the safest country in the world. “But it’s not,” he says.
His wife and daughter were among 176 people killed, including 55 Canadian citizens, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on Jan. 8, 2020. That shattered any illusions the Ontario man had that his family would live happily ever after in Canada. READ MORE...
