First, I would like to say good morning, and I am very pleased that this opportunity has been given to me to talk to you. I also would like to express my thanks to the Government of Canada for being so interested in the issue of human rights in Iran.
In the past few years, most of the attention has been on nuclear energy rather than on human rights, which has been ignored. Canada has been the only one that has paid more attention to the human rights issue and has taken some steps in regard to that matter.
The Iranian government has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But unfortunately, they didn't act the way they were supposed to with respect to the international law.
I am going to give you one of the issues, which was lack of attention to the international human rights issue. We had in the law a violation against gender and also discrimination. I am going to just point to two issues in that respect about the law.
The value of a woman's life is half of the value of a man's life. Therefore if there were an accident in the street, a man would receive twice as much as a benefit as a woman can receive because of that discrimination. In the court of law, two witnesses who are women have equal value to one man who is a witness. One man can have four wives. Without any meaningful reason he can just divorce a wife. Why is it exactly the opposite for a woman? Because it is basically difficult to have a divorce. And all the women in Iran, of course, are all upset about this matter and they show their rejection of these kinds of laws.
About a year ago, we had a group of people, more than a million people, who expressed their views in that regard against this kind of discrimination in Iran. This is the most peaceful way to express against views that are not acceptable. But up to now there have been more than fifty cases against those people who participated in that issue.
We also have the same kind of discrimination against other religions. There are only four religions in Iran that have been accepted as official religions—Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, and Zorastrianism—while there are many Iranians who are Baha'is and there are some people who do not believe that they should follow any established religion. They have no rights in the law. Even among those groups of religions that have been accepted there is discrimination against some of them.
There is very little right to freedom of speech. Even in the law of publications and media, there are limitations of expression against saying anything about constitutional law. They have closed many newspapers. The level of censoring has reached the level that even the Internet is not free.
Elections are not free. People cannot vote for those they want to vote for. The guardians have the right to approve those people who they think should be elected.
I would be happy to answer any questions you have.
