Metro: From Iranian refugee to U of M staff member
Khosrow Hakimzadeh, a coordinator at the U of M in the Faculty of Science, has found meaning and friendship in our city after he fled Iran.
As the Metro newspaper reports,
He was in his mid-20s he left his parents behind in Iran when he realized his life was in danger.
Kurdish from northwest Iran, Hakimzadeh was actively involved in political activities in Iran against the fundamentalist Islamic regime in the late ’80s.
“I was an active member of the community,” he says, adding that he and his friends used to write articles for an underground magazine and distribute it on the streets at night to avoid being caught. They believed in equality, freedom, and women’s rights in a society where those were limited.
Given the opportunity, the Iranian government would capture people like him, jail and torture them.