Canadian woman once tortured by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard ponders her former country’s future
Since Ghazaleh Nozamani endured horrors at hands of religious oppression, her commitment to community and charitable work in Canada is substantial
Three years ago after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s religious morality police, which garnered global attention, I sat down with Ghazaleh Nozamani at her house in Yarrow to hear her harrowing story from 25 years ago.
With her country of birth back in the news this week as Israel bombs the Iran, ostensibly to take out nuclear-arms making capability, Nozamani felt the need to speak up again about a government whose oppression she felt firsthand.
After participating in widespread student protests in 1999, the 20-year-old was tortured in a detention centre and dumped in the countryside.
“It was a very hard three days, which felt like three years.”
Now a Canadian citizen who lives in Chilliwack, she said an older man found her and took her to a phone kiosk.
“He was an angel, he appeared and saved me,” Nozamani said. “I called my father and said ‘trust this man.’ I don’t remember anything else and I woke up in an oxygen tent.
“It was bad. Many people had been killed in that detention centre. I was lucky. For some reason they released me.”
Nozamani was then forced to end her engineering studies at Shariati Technical College. She was blacklisted, which made her unable to leave the country.
Nozamani spent the next decade working on human rights issues and helping operate an orphanage in Iran. In 2009 she escaped to Turkey. She claimed refugee status with her partner in Cyprus where they then got married, having a son in 2011.
The three of them were eventually sponsored by a church in Chilliwack in 2017, and she has lived there since then, working now as an estimator and a project manager. She holds her Red Seal in heat and frost insulation and recently graduated from Capilano University with a community capacity building citation, a program for students with lived experience in hands-on community work.
Like so many Iranian ex-pats, Nozamani watched with keen eyes what happened in her home country in 2022 and again now in 2025.
Iranian citizens are the victims
The killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by Iran’s morality police on Sept. 16, 2022 for wearing her hijab too loosely sparked protests inside the country and around the world.
Nozamani was among the tens thousands of people protesting in Vancouver at the time. They formed a human chain from the Vancouver Art Gallery all the way to Stanley Park.
Now, 10,000 kilometres away from the country where she suffered at the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in 1999 in a protest that changed little, Nozamani is asked what was different in 2022?
“The difference is they weren’t that up front before,” she said regarding the morality police. “There used to be a fine or you would get 20 lashes. Now they are taking another step. Now they kill.
“They are killing innocent women or hitting them in the middle of the street because of a piece of fabric.”
Little changed in Iran even after the Green Revolution in 2009 when protests erupted after an allegedly flawed election, or after the 2011 Arab Spring.
Another difference she sees this time is how widespread the protest are, but also across generations.
“As students, we never had support from our parents or neighbours. Now people are backing each other.
“We want to change society for the next generation.”
What would Nozamani like readers to know about her home country?
“I would like Canadians to know about Iran. Iranians are a warm people, but through this 43 years they have had a very, very tough life and they deserve to be treated as humans again,” a reference to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that brought the current regime to power.
“Sooner or later this regime should go. They are a threat to the world. If atomic bomb technology gets to Iran, it’s going to be terrible.
“We are in a very critical point in the life of the country”
Prescient take on Iran's nuclear technology
That was 2022. Now in 2025, the threat of that nuclear technology is still ever-present. With a radical right-wing government in Israel, emboldened by an apathetic and supportive U.S. government under Donald Trump, Israel is taking the opportunity to attack.
Nozamani definitely doesn’t like war but she calls the Iranian regime a terrorist state capable of not only assassination, but causing economic turmoil in other countries as well.
“People in Iran require immediate action,” she wrote in a 2023 letter to Canadian MPs in her role as political committee leader in her union, Heat and Frost Insulation Local 118.
In response to the request from Nozamani and other Iranian groups in Canada, nine federal Liberal MPs stepped up to sponsor detainees.
In a recent Facebook post, Nozamani put herself out there not to overtly support Israel’s actions but to point out that the Islamic Republic of Iran is funding extremist militias across the Middle East and Africa and she believes something needs to be done to fight against the tyranny this regime represents.
Nozamani’s post from June 14, 2025 about Iran:
“As someone who has lived under the Islamic Republic of Iran, endured its oppression, and rebuilt a life in Canada, I speak from painful experience – not ideology.
“I share this message not to divide, provoke, or call for violence, but to offer a warning drawn from lived reality. I speak today because I fear the world is once again repeating the cycle of silence, manipulation, and destruction that empowers violent regimes and their proxy militias –groups like Hezbollah that thrive on fear, chaos, and the erasure of civilian life.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, under the banner of religion, has spent decades exporting radical ideology at the expense of its people. Its regime has funded extremist militias across the Middle East and Africa – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan – not to promote peace or justice, but to expand power through terror, while impoverishing the Iranian people and crushing dissent at home.
“This regime does not speak for Iranians. In truth, Iran has been ruled for decades by non-Iranian ideologies that betray our rich heritage of culture, poetry, diversity, and dialogue. It is time for Iranians to reclaim their future and their dignity. It is time for the world to stop equating the regime with the people it oppresses.
“Groups such as Hezbollah and the Iranian regime have shown time and again that they do not value civilian life. They use children, women, and the vulnerable as human shields, manipulating global empathy while operating without regard for international law or basic decency.
“Let me be clear: I do not support war. I do not call for violence. I stand firmly for human rights, peace, and democracy. But I also believe that turning a blind eye to tyranny emboldens it.
“Silence is not neutrality – it is complicity.
“My words are not a foreign policy. They are a moral testimony. As an Iranian-Canadian, I believe we must remain vigilant in protecting freedom, defending human dignity, and ensuring that democratic values are not undermined by fear or misinformation – whether at home or abroad.
“The cost of ignoring tyranny is always paid by the most vulnerable. The world cannot afford another mistake born of silence.”
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Paul J. Henderson
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