The first month of 2026 has been uniquely unbearable for the Iranian community, both in the worldwide diaspora and in Iran itself. What began as a seemingly inevitable revolution was rapidly silenced with bloodshed. The Islamic Regime in Iran has systematically murdered tens of thousands of innocent people as they claw for their last throws of survival. This despotic death cult has survived for nearly five decades, but like all dictatorships, it too will eventually crash into oblivion. The “Supreme Leader”, Ali Khamenei, a barbaric warlord straight out of the Stone Age, has clamped onto power for the last thirty years through endless slaughter. From 2009, to 2019, to 2022, to today, the Iranian people have marched in the streets for basic human rights; principles that ironically originated in the very same nation over 2500 years ago by Cyrus the Great. The unified chants of “Javid Shah” throughout the demonstrations point to this historic tradition: a country ruled by monarchical dynasties since its inception, until 1979. Since then, the currency exchange for 1 U.S. dollar plunged from 7…to 140,000. Basic freedoms stripped away. Outside contact restricted. Public executions unlike any other country on Earth. The outflow of savage terrorism like an octopus spreading its filthy tentacles into the free world.

The amount of bloodshed that has been witnessed on social media by the Iranian diaspora has been unbearable and mind-altering. Being so far from your homeland and witnessing a true massacre is unfathomable, especially when you are powerless to do anything but spread awareness. The country-wide internet shutdowns for weeks and weeks disallowed any communication for average families, which completely isolated the country and blocked the bloodbath from being broadcast to the outside world. You read about such inhumanities in books about North Korea…in movies about Auschwitz…in 1984! How could one of the richest nations in the world, at the crossroads of three continents, with natural resources, unmatched human capital, and millennia of culture, be brought down to such a tragic rock bottom?

The story of Sepehr Ebrahimi is particularly tragic due to its online amplification, but it is just one among a sea of similar young innocent lives murdered in cold blood with no mercy whatsoever. Sepehr was a 19-year-old amateur boxer from the city of Andisheh, a suburb of Tehran. Andisheh is also a Persian word, meaning “reflection”. Reflecting on the life of Sepehr, a kid so similar to me in age and background, made me feel particularly blessed to be alive, and in a safe and secure country like Canada. He is now famous in Iranian circles for the outcries of his poor father, as he is searching for the body bag containing his deceased son, in a sea of other corpses, unnamed and unidentifiable. A scene straight out of The Pianist: a crying man limping through a dystopian hellhole littered with dead bodies and blood. In the chaos, he yells through tears, “Sepehr, my son, where are you…where are you, my boy?”… As he walks over corpses of unrecognizable people, he yells out in agony, “This is Khamenei’s monstrous crime!”

The echoes of his sorrow cannot be adequately described in words, and the grief in the throat of a father alive to see his own son go—so savagely and needlessly—will run shivers down the spine of any man who cares to listen. Sepehr’s body was reportedly missing for an entire week, as his parents desperately searched for him. Eventually, the same savage animals who murdered him would not release his body without payment, intimidation, and the justification of his murder as protest-led. 

He was a teenager. A boxer. Someone who should have been thinking about fights, about his future. Instead, he was taken from this world…for no reason.

I went through his Instagram account today; you can still see it for yourself. It is @sepehr_ebrahimi3. Maybe in a different life, we could have been friends. Maybe we could have worked out together. I’m sure he would have gone on to do great things with the endless potential ahead of him. Instead, he is now dead. He lies in a bag, lifeless, eyes looking to the sky, surrounded by a family in agony, in a city on fire, in a country held hostage.

But Sepehr’s fighting spirit will be his eternal legacy. We must not cry; we must be strong, like he was. After this regime is overthrown and the wave of freedom washes away the blood from the streets, strong men like Sepehr will be hoisted up in gold statues for all freedom-loving patriots to admire. His death will be martyred into eternity as a leader of men, leading the charge against injustice and cruelty. We will remember his legacy. We will honor his memory. By reading this today, you now know his name, too. Let’s all remember his name. Sepehr Ebrahimi was martyred doing what he loved best, fighting like a champion until the bitter end.