Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 28th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

We'll go now to Professor Cotler.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to commend both of our witnesses today, Ms. Tamás and Professor Akhavan, for their compelling and very timely testimony. I have a question for each of you.

Ms. Tamás, you mentioned that it is essential that Canada shine the spotlight on the human rights violations in Iran. Professor Akhavan mentioned the same thing. This is what we've been trying to do with our Iran Accountability Week and the Iranian Political Prisoner Global Advocacy Project. You asked that the subcommittee condemn the imprisonment of the Bahá'í leadership and call for their release and that of other political prisoners.

I'm giving notice to the subcommittee now that I will be circulating a motion to that effect for purposes of adoption, hopefully at our Thursday meeting, based on the testimony of both Ms. Tamás and Payam Akhavan today.

My specific questions are the following. First to Ms. Tamás, what do you think we could best do to try to secure the release of the imprisoned Bahá'í leadership?

To Professor Akhavan, what might we be able to do to help secure the release of political prisoners in Iran as a whole?

We can start with Ms. Tamás.

[Susanne Tamás]

That's a very difficult question to answer. I'm not sure that I know what Canada can do to make that happen. Canada is doing so much at the multilateral level not only to tell Iran of its concern but also to get other countries on board and pay attention to it. I think there are key countries that have Iran's ear, that Canada could work bilaterally with those countries and say to them, “Look, you know what's going on in Iran; this is not the kind of thing you would support in your country. Setting aside all of your reasons for not wanting to publicly name and shame Iran, what else are you going to do to persuade it that its own best interests lie in ceasing all of these human rights violations?”

In fact, if they could understand the symbolic value of releasing the Yaran and did so, it would have implications for the entire Bahá’í community. That would be a huge step forward.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Professor Akhavan, how do you think our Iranian political prisoner global advocacy project can work most effectively to help bring about the release of the political prisoners who we have taken on as parliamentarians and others in that regard?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you, Professor Cotler. It's a pleasure to speak with you.

I think that the efforts such as the adoption by members of Parliament, of the Senate, of political prisoners and publicizing their plight, all of these are important measures. When political prisoners are forgotten, the prospect of their abuse becomes that much greater. But I think that we need to shift gears, perhaps, and also look at the perpetrators and not just the victims of this sort of violence. Getting back to my earlier comments—I sound like a broken record talking about targeted sanctions—I think it is equally important to publicize the names of the perpetrators and to give them notoriety, because at the end of the day many of these individuals have a power calculus. They're using human rights abuses to stay in power. When they realize that this may exact a cost somewhere down the road, I think it can have perhaps some kind of a deterrent effect. So naming them is as important as naming the victims.

I would also endorse what Ms. Tamás has said, that one other way that Canada can help, given the fact that Canada already has a very strong position vis-à-vis Iran, is it could work together, for example, with the government of India and other governments that are closer to Iran and that still give Iran some sort of international standing. If those governments also, in addition to the western governments, are raising these issues, I think the signal would be loud and clear to the Iranian regime that in order to have legitimacy with the international community, they have to release political prisoners, and that I think is exactly what message they need to receive.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Professor.

Thank you, Ms. Tamás.

I just want to mention that I appreciate that colleagues from all parties are here. Mr. Weston is here, my colleague Judy Sgro is here. There's a great interest by parliamentarians now, and we will mobilize with regard to the recommendations you mentioned.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

That's quite true. There has been a substantial amount of interest.

We have Mr. Weston; Mr. Lizon, who is not normally here; Ms. Sgro, of course; Christine Moore from the New Democrats. So there's quite a bit of interest from MPs who have come to attend our meeting.

In fact, Mr. Lizon is on the questioners' list. Please feel free to begin.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm not a regular here on the subcommittee, but I'm filling in for my colleague. I actually have many questions, and I was thinking of which question to ask.

I am familiar with a lot of these problems that were described. I grew up in Communist Poland, and in my youth we were also asking the question, “When is this going to end?” Nobody truly believed it would end in our lifetime, but it did happen.

I have a question. If the current regime in Iran collapses, how prepared are the Iranians to replace it with something that would lead to a fully democratic country?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

I would assume, sir, that question is for me?

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Yes. Go ahead, professor.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

It's an excellent question. That is what I try to allude to in my statement about post-apartheid South Africa, about a negotiated peaceful transition. I think I was asked whether the regime is on the brink of collapse. You never know: it's very difficult, and collapses don't come all at once. Certainly, based on your experience with communist Poland, you would know that the rotting away of communism was a long time in the making. Even if it was consummated dramatically, it didn't happen overnight.

I think there are deep divisions within the regime, and there are fundamental problems. I have little doubt that sooner or later we will see an Iran that is very different from the one we see today.

The question is: how do we go from here to there while avoiding some sort of cataclysm that could result in massive suffering, not just for the Iranian people, but for the entire region? Iran itself is a very diverse community of different political, ethnic, and religious persuasions. Within Iranian civil society, there is a substantial number of Iranian political activists, and there is now a move to create dialogue so we can have a democratic constituency that can sustain democratic institutions once that change comes about.

Essentially, Iran is far ahead of Egypt and the other countries in the Middle East because it is in a post-ideological, post-utopian state. When I was in Tahrir Square in Cairo, people were praising Ahmadinejad. They still had this romance about an Islamic state, and that's because they hadn't lived under one.

It's like the story of the man who sent his son to study in the Soviet Union rather than Paris to make sure he never becomes a communist. People in Iran have no illusions about that sort of state. That's why I've been talking about the surveys showing that among the population there are many liberal values, like skepticism about power. But at the level of the international community, I think policy-makers also need to think about what people throughout the world can do to encourage some sort of negotiated peaceful transition.

Rather than focusing on the nuclear issue and ever harsher sanctions and threats of war, I think we need to be a bit more—if I may say—intelligent and not so short-sighted. We must understand that Iran has immense potential, but we need to go beyond short-term narrow calculations and invest in a long-term democratic transition.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

The last questions will be asked by Ms. Moore, to whom I now yield the floor.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you.

My first question is for Mr. Akhavan.

I would like to know why Canada does not target individuals who are part of the regime through instruments such as the International Criminal Court.

I would also like to know whether there are any differences in the way Bahá'í women and Bahá'í men are treated.

What is the difference between Iranian women and Iranian women of the Bahá'í faith? Is there a difference?

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you for that question. I will perhaps leave your second question for Ms. Tamás. I will simply say one of the Bahá’í principles that enrages the hardliner religious leaders in Iran is the equality of men and women. Very often the propaganda portrays Bahá’í women as being immoral and promiscuous and so forth, but conversely that's also part of the appeal of the Bahá’í beliefs to significant segments of the Iranian population.

With respect to the International Criminal Court, there was a question on the referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council for crimes against humanity. Do I understand your question correctly?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

He's asking whether he has understood your question correctly.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

The first question was simply about why the International Criminal Court is not being used to target the regime members who commit those offences.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

I know that Professor Cotler has, for many years, been at the forefront of a proposal with respect to bringing the leadership of Iran before the International Criminal Court. Of course, the problem is that Iran has not recognized the court's jurisdiction and has not signed the treaty, which would mean that half of its leadership will be prosecuted in the Hague.

The only way to really address this issue is before the UN Security Council. Of course, we see that even with respect to Syria, where there are massive atrocities, there is little political inclination to do so, given the politics of the Security Council. But I still think that Canada can raise the issue, even if it is not politically feasible. I think anything that begins to promote individual accountability for crimes against humanity in Iran would be very important.

In order to move towards a foreign policy that promotes accountability, first we can do what we are capable of doing within the government itself, which is to adopt targeted sanctions. That could certainly be a starting point, which doesn't depend on the complex politics of the United Nations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Ms. Tamás, would you like to respond to your part of the question?

[Susanne Tamás]

Certainly, thank you very much for the question, particularly because it's caused me to reflect.

Here, I'm going to go back to the list of statistics of prisoners that we have. I have been surprised by the number of women prisoners of all ages who are Bahá'í. When I think about that I wonder if it's because Bahá'í women are empowered: they have voices, they raise their voices, they engage with neighbours, they educate children, and they're active in their families. They discuss with their neighbours how a family functions, and issues of equality, the importance of educating the girl child—all of these things are part of their belief system. Whether or not that accounts for the fact that many of them are imprisoned along with male Bahá'í, I don't know.

So I really want to thank you, Ms. Moore, for your question because I will go back and take another look at that particular statistic.

Male and female prisoners are kept segregated. Even visits are segregated. So if a family wants to visit Mr. Khanjani, the female relatives can visit him one week, and then the following week the male members of the family can go to visit him. The male members of the community are being held in Gohardasht prison, whereas the female members are being held in Evin prison.

I don't know if that's because they are Bahá'í. It may simply be the Iranian government's way of sifting and sorting people of male or female gender.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

I think we've used up all of our available time. In fact we've gone over it a little bit, so we're going to have to end this meeting.

I do have one last thing to take care of. I have a request that we approve a budget to send off to the main committee.

I know you're eager to approve it, Mr. Marston. I should tell you what it is for, first. It's actually for the witnesses for the Iran study. Is that okay?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I so move.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thanks, everybody.

I want to thank both of our witnesses for coming. You've been very informative. This is not the first time, and once again you've lived up to the high standards you've set in the past.

Thank you, Ms. Tamás, for being with us from Montreal by video conference.

Thank you, Professor Akhavan, for calling after hours from Italy. I know you went to considerable difficulty to do so.

We appreciate both of your being here. Thank you very much.

[Dr. Payam Akhavan]

Thank you.