Collective Trauma and Political Activism: Learning from the Bereaved Families of Shot Down Ukrainian Airline Flight 752

On January 8, 2020, Ukraine Airline Flight 752 was shot down minutes after taking off from Tehran, Iran, by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. This happened hours after Iran had launched missiles at US targets in Iraq. Amongst the 176 people killed in this tragedy, many of them children, were 85 Iranian-Canadians who had traveled to visit their relatives in Iran. Over the past two years, families of the victims have struggled to find some healing from this trauma amidst political pressures in their fight to get accountability, transparency and justice for their loved ones. This paper is an account of group therapy sessions conducted over two years with these bereaved families, mostly mothers. I provide a detailed account of how relational psychoanalytic principles were utilized to develop a group psychotherapy model for dealing with this novice complex situation where the trauma is as individual as it is collective. For these families, grief and trauma is complicated by the sociopolitical issues surrounding the incident, including lack of transparency, dishonesty, insensitivity and absence of any attempts at reparations or reconciliation by the Iranian government in the aftermath of this tragedy. I examine how these political moments has come to inform psychological challenges of the group, including their emotions, dreams and fantasies. I further elaborate on how these experiences have transformed these individuals into political activists as observed not only in their individual and collective identities but also in their actual participation in the political arena.