Mr. Speaker, for decades now, members of the 300,000-strong Baha'i community have suffered relentless persecution at the hands of the Government of Iran. These incidents have been documented by the United Nations and have received international condemnation.
These attacks reached new heights in March and May of 2008, when seven leaders of the Baha'i community in Iran were arrested and charged with espionage. Since then, the violation of norms of international jurisprudence, in other words, their arrest, prolonged solitary confinement, denial of access to their legal counsel, false charges, sham trial and subsequent sentence communicated verbally to their lawyer, has been universally condemned.
I am calling on the government to call in the Iranian chargé d'affaires, head of the mission, and to call on the Iranian government to stop the persecution of the members of the Baha'i faith and to immediately release the seven leaders of the Baha'i community who remain imprisoned in Iran.