Vigil held at U of S to honour victims of Tehran plane crash

The University of Saskatchewan’s Iranian Student’s council held a vigil on Friday to honour the lives lost in the plane crash near Tehran on Wednesday.

Member of the Iranian student council and one of the organizers of the vigil, Shahab Minaei, said he and his friends were shocked when they heard the news and stayed up all night to get more updates on what happened.

“It was a really tough situation. I haven’t experienced the same through my life,” he said.

“We are part of this community. We came here as migrants but our heart is in our home country, Iran. So we are with them and because the victims are mostly students we feel much more close with them, with their families with their loved ones.”

More than 100 people attended the vigil at the graduate students association to pay respects to the 176 people who lost their lives.

Of those 176 people who died in the crash, 57 were Canadians, most of whom were university students.

According to Ali Akbar, another member of the Iranian Student’s Council at the U of S, it is customary in Iran to come together and show support when someone loses a family member.

“We are so emotional and when something like this happens we all get together to reduce the pain the suffer that people can have in the situation,” said Akbar.

“When people come together especially in such a disastrous incident we can feel that we are not alone. That’s why we are here to remind the people that we are there beside them.”