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.