Every year I go through a round of meetings mentioning the annual resolution that was passed in the UN against Iran on the subject of human rights issues in Iran. Ethnic minorities were mentioned, but not extensively. One of our requests is to have ethnic groups be a very clear part of that resolution. Every year annual reports come from every country, and ethnic minorities are not mentioned. We would welcome a very clear resolution on ethnic minorities--it's possible--but as you can see, we have a long way to go. We would like to focus on awareness and the cultural genocide--a linguistic genocide that has been happening in Iran for the last 80 years. Ethnic minorities need international support to bring awareness to this issue, and we call on the different governments and the Canadian government to support us.
My organization is a Canadian-based organization that has been working tirelessly on this for three years, but we have very limited resources. We ask the Canadian government for resources to be able to do more. A resolution or any other help to bring awareness in Canada and the international community would be welcome.
I am going to attend the Durbin conference on racism. What is happening in Iran is a very severe type of racism and systematic assimilation. But unfortunately the international community is not aware of it, and this is the first time in the last couple of years that a few issues have come up.