Thank you very much. I'd just like to say how I am in awe of Ms. Ressa and Mr. Leung. Thank you so much for all you do.
Narges Mohammadi is equally brave putting her own life at risk inside Iran as a long-time human rights defender. I recently spoke to her. She is bravely defying a prison summons that she received a few weeks ago. She spent the better part of 13 years in prison for her peaceful human rights advocacy. She was in solitary confinement four times. The last time was for 64 days, 40 of which were spent completely incommunicado, with no access to a lawyer, nothing. And yet she's risking all of this again—her safety and her security.
She asks of you that when international lawmakers or anyone with any kind of connection to Iran is making an official visit to the country and meeting with someone inside the country—and I understand that Canada doesn't have those official ties—someone like the foreign minister, that they demand to first meet with someone like Narges so they can amplify the voices of civil society inside the country so that civil society dissidents know that those people, those officials as foreign officials, have not taken the side of their oppressors over them.
It is very important that we give those people platforms. Narges's request to all of you is that we give a platform to people like her, that we don't simply allow people like Zarif, the former foreign minister, to write op-eds in our western newspapers, that we give platforms and voice to dissidents inside Iran and strengthen civil society in that way. Narges is really a champion of that in so many ways. Uplifting people like her like Nasrin Sotoudeh, like Atena Daemi and countless other brave activists is very important.
I'd just like to add, on the subject of journalism inside Iran, that while the world was so focused, and rightfully so, on the atrocious death and tragedy of Jamal Khashoggi, it completely overlooked Rahul Azam who was lured to Iraq, abducted, taken to Iran and executed after a grossly unfair trial. So we're really not hearing enough about the struggles of civil society inside Iran.