Thank you very much.
I want to begin by thanking the esteemed members of the subcommittee for providing me the opportunity to meet with you today, in the wake of International Women's Day, in this session about the rights and freedoms of women in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. I will focus my remarks on the issue of women in Iran.
As you're well aware, Iranians are in the throes of a national uprising against the theocratic regime that has ruled their country for four decades. Sparked by the killing of a young woman for improper hijab, the protests have become revolutionary in nature, calling for “death to the dictator” and “death to the Islamic Republic”. Most importantly, the protesters have been chanting a slogan that, in its very first word, proves that the rights of women are at the forefront of this uprising. “Woman, life, freedom” serves both as a revolutionary chant and as a manifesto of what the protesters want.
In response to this revolutionary moment, Iran's regime has resorted to the only play in its playbook, unleashing brutality, often deployed on a gendered basis, to silence critics.
After attacking peaceful protesters on the streets and beating them savagely, Iran's regime detained thousands and threatened them with execution. The Iranian Justice Collective, a group of activists that I am proud to be a part of, has been able to carefully document approximately 3,600 detentions. The actual number is likely many times that. The regime has, as reported by CNN and other outlets, regularly used sexual assault as a tool to intimidate detainees.
In recent weeks, this regime or a shadowy organization closely affiliated with it has been the likely culprit behind a horrific campaign of chemically poisoning thousands of schoolgirls. Again, the Iranian Justice Collective has carefully documented 630 chemical attacks at 388 schools. The message of such poisoning is not difficult to decipher. If you stand up to their misogyny—as so many brave schoolgirls have done in recent months—they will stop at nothing to destroy you. The chemical attacks are also a reminder that the Islamic regime in Iran—much like the Taliban, who have used this tactic repeatedly—views the education of girls as a serious threat to its power.
It's important to remember, of course, that the horrific misogyny that the world has seen from Iran's regime in recent months is not a new phenomenon. It's written into the very DNA of this theocracy. Reciting the history of this regime's misogynistic policies and crimes will take more time than we have today. I will simply point out that among the first actions of the Islamic Republic were to remove women from many professions, segregate many parts of public life along gender lines and impose the hijab on women—often at gunpoint or by throwing acid in the faces of women who did not comply.
In fact, perhaps the first to stand up to the Islamic Regime were Iran's women who, in massive International Women's Day marches in 1979, opposed the erosion of their rights. Those protests and many other acts of courageous defiance by women were met with violence.
Alas, that violence ultimately succeeded in turning Iran's women into second-class citizens, both de jure and de facto.
An Iranian woman is not permitted to travel without permission from her father or husband. In Iran, polygamy for men is permitted, as is the marriage of very young girls. According to IranWire—which is an investigative news site—Iran's National Organization for Civil Registration's 2021 annual report showed that in the previous eight years, over 13,000 marriages of girls under the age of 13 had been registered.
In Iran, a woman is not permitted to sing a solo or ride a bike in public. Women cannot enter stadiums to watch the national soccer team play. A daughter's share of inheritance is half that of her brother's. A woman's testimony in court is worth half that of a man's. When it comes to restitution for murder, a woman's life is literally valued at half that of a man in Iran's criminal code.
I could go on with a hundred other ways, large and small, that Iran's regime dehumanizes women on a daily basis. All of those facts point to one conclusion, about which we should not mince words. For over four decades, Iran has been a gender apartheid state.
The question, then, is this: What should Canada do?
I believe the most valuable thing our government can do is very simple, but from it will flow a host of other policies. Our government must recognize the obvious truth that I just stated a moment ago: that the Islamic Republic of Iran is an apartheid state and that we should treat it as such.
Even though the gender apartheid system in Iran is four decades old, successive Canadian governments have looked the other way for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it was for commercial reasons, but more often out of the well-entrenched—but in my opinion misguided—view that dialogue and engagement will always lead to improvements in the behaviour of rogue states.
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Does that mean my time is up?