Mr. Speaker, this week Iranian TV featured riots in the streets, Indian reserves described as concentration camps and state-sponsored extermination of the disenfranchised.
That is the disparaging image of Canada being promoted by two errant former first nations leaders, Terry Nelson and Dennis Pashe, before the state-run media in Iran.
Canada listed Iran as a state-sponsor of terror for very good reasons: Holocaust denial; genocide promotion; training, equipping and supplying arms to terrorist organizations bent on blocking any peace in the Middle East. Arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution of dissidents top the list of flagrant human rights abuses.
These ignorant emissaries have insulted the memory of Holocaust survivors and thousands of Iranian Canadians who know the realities of this brutal regime. Zahra Kazemi, Canadian photojournalist, was arrested outside the infamous Evin prison in 2003, tortured, raped and beaten to death. Her family in Montreal would still like to have her body returned for a proper burial.
This sad spectacle speaks to an ancient proverb:
If...the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!