Mr. President, honourable members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great honour for me, as an Iranian Canadian, to share with you my testimony on the situation of human rights in Iran.
Nearly two years after Iran's tainted presidential elections, the Iranian civic movement remains one of the most promising indigenous democracy movements in the history of Iran and the Middle East. While its path remains long and arduous, the movement has already transformed the way democracy, non-violence, and human rights are conceived, talked about, and fought for in Iran. This movement managed to carry out one of the largest, spontaneous demonstrations in contemporary Middle East history—by some estimates, three million people. During the unrest after the elections, the regime was caught off guard by the Green Movement's demonstrations. Security forces were initially paralyzed by the members and by the number of participants, and the government took drastic measures in an attempt to regain control and quell the uprising in the streets. The government placed a ban on all opposition rallies and unleashed security forces, including revolutionary guards, units of the besieged paramilitary units, and plainclothes paramilitary forces. Thousands of protestors were beaten, around 5,000 were arrested, and dozens were killed by snipers.
In the fall of 2009, more than a hundred of the Green Movement's most important leaders, activists, and theorists appeared in short trials reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's infamous trials in the 1930s. They were accused and they were forced to confess on television to several crimes against the nation. Not all the detainees made it to trial; the torture and death of prisoners in the Kahrizak prison became a lingering source of political embarrassment for the regime.
Of the countless human rights abuses that afflicted Iran over the last year, three became particularly prominent. The first was the case of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 27-year-old woman who was shot in the initial round of post-election protests. The second was—