Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

Yes, she is free. She is not incarcerated.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much.

We now have Mr. Sweet from the Conservatives.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Boroumand, thank you for taking the time to address the committee.

I have a publication in front of me called An Indictment Against My Own Conscience. Ladan Boroumand is the author. Ladan is who?

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

She is my sister.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

It's a compelling document. One of the things that I think can happen when we operate at committee like this is that we talk so much about human rights, sometimes we lose the face of what we're investigating. I just want to read a paragraph in this small article that captured me. It says:

From among thousands of young men and women who faced firing squads for no crime, my memory rests on the smile of a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Mona Mahmudnizhad. Her laughing eyes light up her beautiful face and the locks of her hair intensify that light. She was detained for a few months. They wanted her to denounce her Baha’i faith and she refused. They hanged her along with nine other Baha’i women on Saturday morning, June 28, 1984.

Ladan's article really highlights the fact that whether you're Baha’i or whether you're someone who disagrees with the leadership and they want to erroneously charge you with adultery or with being gay or lesbian or whatever does not fit into the small spectrum of what they feel the world should look like and of course does not challenge their authoritarian power, they're prepared to do anything, from torture to execution, to silence the individual.

You had mentioned a One Million Signatures campaign. Were there any positive results from that campaign? Did you see any movement in the regime, any pressure that made some difference?

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

There are several positive results with the campaign.

Before looking at the regime, we have to look at where we stood and where we stand now. Iranian civil society was not organized. Iranian civil society and political movements have often been based around particular individuals whose existence made the group survive. They are sometimes charismatic and sometimes not. They were easy targets for the regime because all it took was to take the head of an organization and everything would fall apart. Organizations didn't have experience and didn't really work together.

The campaign has taught Iranian civil society that if you put your egos aside and you work together for the same goal, you are much stronger and much less vulnerable to repression. Because one person is arrested but there are 15 others all over the place. There are two people in the Kurdish areas and two others are there. There are no big leaders.

And the campaign is issue-focused. So the campaign has talked to a lot of Iranians. Now a lot of people know about the campaign, and it has tentacles all over Iran. That is why they repressed it. They didn't care much about the campaign before all the women's rights activism, but because it has become organized and because it's effective, they go after them. So once they are effective and they talk and people know about it, the leadership and reformers or other people within the leadership have to listen. Even if nothing happens, they know this is a demand and this demand is serious.

Ahmadinejad's government introduced a draft law that was changing the little gains that Iranian women had made in terms of divorce and child custody, and there was such an uproar from these women's rights activitists and from everyone that they took it back. I think this is a first. So there have been successes, although they are small successes. But the success for us, at this point, is that these movements survive. They survive and thrive, and that is the success. That is when you know the government will retreat.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

It teaches us that unrelenting effort and persistence pays off.

You had mentioned right at the end of your address several recommendations. I'm paraphrasing now, but the first one was resources for activists. Could you just give me an idea about what you mean by that?

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

I'm not necessarily talking about governments per se, but groups. There is no funding for human rights groups inside Iran. That used to be the case for Morocco and Algeria and other places. Iran is not unique in that sense.

I remember working on women's rights in Morocco, and the woman who was helping me had to go to her law office to earn a living--hardly--and then try to work on the cases of these poor women, victims of domestic violence, on her holidays, at night, and at lunch time. She was very good, but she couldn't be as effective. If she had a salary and could only do her women's rights activism, the issue would have more gains. So I think that's what I mean. One student told me it's the phone, how much her phone bills cost every month when she tries to organize with the students in Zanjan and the students in Tabriz. Her cellphone bill is expensive, and her family cannot afford it.

So I think that when the human rights community can support the human rights community in Iran and elsewhere, governments are a little bit more sensitive. I'm sure there are ways to do that. But the Iranian government, by criminalizing any contact between the outside world and Iran, has deterred the human rights community from getting money, and that slows them down. I say money, but support, moral support, visibility, all of this is what I say. If you have people who regularly translate what they write there, that's already support, because if their issues get visibility here, the government will be on the retreat.

So I'm talking of all of this together—they need help. If the government tells you that if you help them, they're going to accuse you of spying, you say, “Okay, let's move on.” That's what happened, you know. First it was workshops for civil society, then there was a retreat. The workshops were outside Iran on the borders. Then that became dangerous too. So the workshops, instead of being on women's rights, or civil rights, or whatever, became photography and journalism.

In the end, no one is doing anything, because anything that the international community does, and the Iranian people want them to do, becomes a criminal act. So we have to stop this, and I don't know how to stop this. But by retreating we won't stop it; we will encourage it.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Madam Boroumand, thank you very much. Please thank your sister as well for An Indictment Against My Own Conscience. It's very thought-provoking.

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

She will be very happy to hear that. I'm glad.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you very much, Madam Boroumand. We very much appreciate you coming.

We apologize for the fact that our meeting was cut short the way it was. Nevertheless, you have used the time very well. I know that all of us have found it very informative. It will help us in preparing our report. I do appreciate it.

Thank you.

[Dr. Roya Boroumand]

Thank you for having me. I'm sorry for the flight cancellation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Not at all. We were able to get all the information. It was very useful to us.

Members of the committee, we are going to now go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]