Mr. Speaker, I support Motion No. 410 which calls upon the government, crown corporations and divisions to divest from corporations conducting business in Sudan and Iran, to divest from funds and other financial instruments invested in or operating in Sudan and Iran, and, which is of relevance to the comments by my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois, except where such funds support humanitarian aid and humanitarian relief programs, or are used to fund Canadian embassies, consulates and representative offices in these countries. It was crafted carefully.
The motion, in effect, calls for the strategic and targeted withdrawal of government investments in the economies of Sudan and Iran so as to deter and combat the Sudanese and Iranian capacity to engage in mass atrocities, to combat the culture of impunity, to impose a penalty for the commission of mass atrocity and reduce the capacity of corporations to enable its commission, to send a clear message through the naming and shaming of the enablers, and to deter and combat the enablers of mass atrocities, those who sell the arms, those who buy the oil, those who finance the sales. In a word, to force the countries, Sudan and Iran and their corporate enablers, to pay a price for their respective commission and enabling of mass atrocities.
I will turn now to two key questions that have arisen in the debate. First, why Sudan and Iran? Second, what can be done with regard to the enablers? I will use China as a case study and the Canadian connection.
With regard to Sudan and Iran, those two countries represent, as I will point out in a moment, the two faces of genocide in the 21st century and they constitute a standing threat to international peace and security.
In the matter of Sudan, it represents, as has been mentioned, the first genocide of the 21st century: 400,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced, 4 million on a life support system and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, mass atrocities that continue unabated.
We have not only the perpetration of mass atrocities by the Sudanese government, but the culture of impunity that underpins it. Here reference has been made, for example, to the UN Security Council resolution with regard to the deployment of a joint UN-African Union protective force.
It is the Sudanese government that is impeding the effective and expeditious deployment of that force, that continues with the indiscriminate bombing and burning of villages, that refuses to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and that refuses to surrender genocidaires to the International Criminal Court which has issued arrest warrants.
I will give one scandalous example. One of the arrest warrants is with respect to Ahmad Harun, the minister of humanitarian affairs in the Sudanese government. Not only did the Sudanese government not surrender him to the International Criminal Court, it has actually promoted him. It has put him in charge of investigating the human rights complaints with respect to mass atrocities committed by Sudanese. It has made him the liaison officer with respect to the deployment of the UN-African Union force. It has forcibly evacuated internally displaced persons from the refugee camps and replaced them with Arab tribes who have been recruited to take their place and have undermined both the comprehensive peace plan with regard to southern Sudan and the Darfur peace process, each in that sense undermining the other and bringing about the risk of the unravelling of Sudan as a whole.
All of this led to an impassioned appeal recently at the Conference on the Prevention of Genocide at McGill University by Salih Mahmoud Osman, a heroic figure in Sudan who himself was the victim of beatings and torture. He said, “I am appealing to Canada, act now; tomorrow will be too late”, reminding us, and Canada in particular, of our role with regard to the responsibility to protect the doctrine.
The tragedy is that while the international community continues to dither and thereby connive, however inadvertently, with the Sudanese government, Darfuris continue to die.
However, if Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century and the perpetrator and enablers of a culture of impunity, Iran constitutes a standing threat to international peace and security. Iran has defied UN Security Council resolutions calling on it to cease the enriching of uranium and the moving along to becoming an atomic power, where Ahmadinejad's Iran, and I use the term Ahmadinejad's Iran to distinguish that from the people of Iran who are themselves the objects of his domestic mass repression, but where in Ahmadinejad's Iran it has become the epicentre of the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes, namely genocide, embedded in the most virulent of hatred, namely anti-Semitism, dramatized by the parading in the streets of Tehran of a Shahab-3 missile draped in the emblem, “Wipe Israel off the map”, and warning Muslims that those who recognize Israel will burn in the Umma of Islam.
Finally, we should not ignore the domestic mass repression in Ahmadinejad's Iran of Iranian women, students, minorities, dissidents, trade union workers and the like, which leads me now to the second question and the underlying purpose of the motion, which is to divest from enablers. Here I will use China and the China petroleum company as a case study because divestment is not simply a unilateral act. It is a support system, not apart from, but in conjunction with the United Nations and the international sanctions a regime, a support system that is working in conjunction with the international community, a support system that is part of the responsibility to protect a doctrine in conjunction with other countries and, indeed, with universities here in Canada, such as Queen's University which became the first university to divest with respect to Iran.
In other words, there is an economic underpinning to the Sudanese genocide and that economic underpinning is anchored in the Sudanese petroleum sector with some 80% of Sudanese oil revenues being used to support the military which in turn prosecutes and perpetrates the genocide in Darfur.
It is China that has invested $15 billion in Sudan and it is the China National Petroleum Company that is engaged in the extraction of oil that is financing the genocide, that has facilitated the arms trade between China and Sudan and that has financed the military expenditures that have sold Sudan the weapons that have made the military offensive and atrocities possible.
There is also a specific Canadian connection which has thus far almost gone unnoticed. I am referring to the fact that the China National Petroleum Company has been granted 11 oil blocks in the Alberta oil sands. These concessions represent over $2 billion barrels of recoverable oil here in Canada.
China and the CNPC should themselves now be the target of the divestment in order to leverage Sudan to permit the expeditious and effective deployment of the UN civilian protection force, to comply with UN Security Council resolutions banning offensive military action and the like, to surrender the genocidaires pursuant to international arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court, to put an end to the killing fields and to support and not undermine the two peace processes, the Darfur peace process and the comprehensive peace process; in a word, to ensure that the responsibility to protect doctrine is not simply a matter of rhetoric or words but that it is a matter of action, a matter of combating impunity, of ensuring accountability and of saving lives.
As a student said last night at the University of Ottawa where I participated in a forum with respect to the responsibility to protect doctrine and the combating of the genocide by attrition in Darfur and, as I said, with respect to Canada at this point, if not us who and if not now when. If we are the architects of the responsibility to protect doctrine, we should assume our responsibility to help implement it.