Well, it's persistent and pervasive.
If you look at the report of the international campaign for human rights in Iran, now the Center for Human Rights in Iran, they identify nine major government ministries, three of which I've referenced. Those nine major government ministries are all under the authority of the President of Iran, but effectively under the authority of the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and are all engaged both in the human rights violations and the attending culture of impunity.
We have to address what is happening in Iran in the manner I referenced earlier. When we speak about Iran as well, we have to realize in our representations that they are in effect violating their own law in many of these matters. They are violating international treaties to which they are a co-state party with Canada. When they violate those treaties, they are violating bilateral obligations they have made to us.
When you look at the situation with regard to the Bahá'í, the prosecution and persecution of the Bahá'í leadership is a case study of the systematic character of Iranian injustice. What you have, on the 9th anniversary of the imprisonment of the senior leaders of the Bahá'í faith, is arbitrary, illegal, and prolonged detention; torture and ill-treatment in detention; false and trumped up charges, such as “spreading corruption on earth”, which is a capital crime; denial of the right to effective trial; denial of the right to see and rebut the prosecutorial indictment against them; and trial hearings that are devoid of any semblance of due process before a political judiciary.
That is why I say that the Bahá'ís' situation is a case study of widespread and systematic injustice, but with a particular injustice, whereby the very practice of their faith is being denied, their very right to an education is being denied, and where they endure a specific form of exclusion and indictment in Iranian society, marked by the fact that they are the most peaceful and law-abiding of groups.
I think to whatever extent we can address and redress the pain and plight of the Bahá'í and bring about the release of their leadership, we will be advancing the case and cause of justice and peace as a whole.