House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2011, with 41% of the vote.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, as I said in my remarks and in response to another question on the same subject, it is important that we—as a government and as a country—take the initiative and condemn the death penalty, not only here in Canada, but also around the world. We are a signatory to an international treaty in that regard. It is very important that we condemn the execution of young people, particularly in Iran.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, as I said in previous debates, we need to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran. One of the problems with our relationship with the Iranian people came to the surface when the green movement started a few years ago, in June 2009: it was some time before we expressed our solidarity with the Iranian people regarding their aspirations. It is very important to help them when it is possible to do so, because it is difficult to help them now.
However, there are things that can be done to further their right to express themselves, including condemning the imprisonment of those people who try to express their rights and aspirations and making it clear that we are behind the Iranian people and the minorities in Iran when it comes to their aspirations and their needs.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, there is an excellent all-party unanimous report first drafted by the foreign affairs subcommittee that I mentioned, then approved by the foreign affairs committee and tabled in this Parliament, which regrettably got overtaken by the election but still deserves adoption. It set forth an inventory of recommendations of actions. We would do well to undertake those actions, which include among other things: listing the Iranian revolutionary guard corps as a terrorist entity under Canadian law; expanding the range of targeted sanctions for human rights violations, as well as our targeted sanctions with respect to a nuclear threat; and, addressing Iran in terms of the fourfold threat and the interrelationship of that fourfold threat, as that unanimous report does, and developing sanctions that are organized around that fourfold threat.
We would not want to have a situation whereby as a result of negotiations next week Iran agrees finally to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which I would like to see, and then we forget about the human rights violations, the terrorist assaults and the like. That is why we have to look at the composite fourfold threat and have a critical mass of remedy.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will recall that our foreign affairs committee and the subcommittee on international human rights, which he chairs, has heard witness testimony to the effect that Iran is engaged in the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes, namely genocide, embedded in the most virulent of hatreds, namely anti-Semitism. It is underpinned by the legal pursuit of atomic weapons dramatized by the parading in the streets of Tehran of a Shahab 3 missile draped in the emblem with the words “wipe Israel off the map”, to which are added four other words, sometimes ignored “as the Imam says”, namely that this is a religiously sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide. This is in standing violation of international law and genocide prevention.
Therefore, it behooves us to undertake the legal measures authorized by international law to hold the Iranian leaders to account and, in particular, to initiate among other things an interstate complaint against Iran, which is also a state party to the genocide convention, before the international court of justice for its standing violations of this most horrific of crimes in international law.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, when I was minister of justice and attorney general of Canada in 2005, I ratified, on behalf of Canada, the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, wherein we oblige ourselves not only in terms of our commitment against the death penalty but to play a leadership role in seeking the abolition of the death penalty internationally. In effect we are bound by treaty of that which we are bound by domestic law in terms of our own Constitution and Supreme Court decisions, where the death penalty is unconstitutional in Canada and the death penalty internationally is something that we have condemned, that we have ratified an international treaty to deplore it and that we seek to do away with it internationally.
Iran May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this take note debate on human rights violations in Iran, which is as urgent as it is necessary. Indeed, the violations of human rights in Iran, the persistent and pervasive assault on the human rights of the Iranian people, has only intensified since our last take note debate here some 15 months ago. As I said then, and as remains no less true today, “Ahmadinejad, Khamenei's Iran”. I use these terms to distinguish from the people and public of Iran who are otherwise the targets of massive domestic oppression. The Iranian regime has emerged as a clear and present danger to international peace and security, to regional and Middle East stability, to diplomatic protection and increasingly and alarmingly so to its own people, which has inspired this evening's take note debate.
As I said in this House a year ago, and on several occasions, Ahmadinejad’s Iran is characterized by the toxic convergence of four distinct threats that are closely related: the nuclear threat, the threat of incitement to genocide, the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and the systematic and widespread violation of Iranians' rights.
Let there be no mistake about it. Iran is in standing violation of international legal prohibitions respecting the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Indeed, there have been six chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions prohibiting the enrichment of uranium for a nuclear weaponization program. Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide prohibited under the genocide convention. Iran is a leading state sponsor of international terrorism. The year 2012 alone has witnessed Iranian terror's footprints in such terrorist assaults from Azerbaijan to India from Thailand to Washington from Malaysia to Argentina. Iran is engaged in massive domestic repression of the rights of its people, which will be the subject of the balance of my remarks, though the other considerations have their human rights connection and fall-out, as I mentioned.
We meet on the fourth anniversary of the imprisonment of the entire Baha'i leadership, each sentenced to 20 years or re-sentenced to 20 years after an appeal brought it down and then re-sentenced to 20 years for such trumped-up charges as, “insulting religious sanctities, propaganda against the state”, charges utterly without foundation, reminiscent of the old Soviet tactic “give us the people and we will find the crime”. Indeed, their reinstated 20-year sentences now constitute an effective death sentence given the advanced age of the entire Baha'i leadership. Despite repeated requests from both the defendants and their attorneys, neither official copies of the original verdict nor the ruling on appeal have been disclosed to date.
The plight of the Baha'i in Iran offers a looking glass into the plight of human rights in Iran in general, and the criminalization of innocence, as finds expression in the criminalization and targeting of Iran's largest religious minority in particular. Simply put, the persecution and prosecution of these Baha'i is a case study of the systematic if not systemic character of Iranian injustice as a whole, including arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention, false and trumped-up charges such as “spreading corruption on earth” and “espionage for foreign elements”, coerced confessions, torture and detention, denial of the right to effective counsel, denial of the right to introduce any evidence in one's defence and the ominous threat always of execution along with the intimidation if not arrest and imprisonment of one's own family and lawyers. I will address this more fully in the second part of my remarks this evening when I will concentrate on what has happened just in these last few days to the Baha'i, the gays and lesbians, to students, political prisoners and the like.
Moreover, while we have been understandably preoccupied with the slaughter of innocents in Syria where Iran itself has been implicated and where we have been involved in the necessary addressing of the nuclear threat question of Iran, Iran's massive domestic repression has been passing only too quietly under the international radar screen. Indeed, in the aftermath of the recent Iranian parliamentary elections, marred by the imprisonment and silencing of all opposition, the state-sanctioned assault on the human rights of the Iranian people not only continues unabated but is widened and intensified.
Only two days after the March 2 parliamentary elections, Tehran's revolutionary court sent prominent lawyer and co-founder of the recently shuttered Centre for Human Rights Defenders, Abdolfattah Soltani, to an 18-year prison sentence and a 20-year ban on his legal practice. The trumped-up charges again included the usual ones, and one particular one: the crime of establishing a human rights group and also of receiving “an illegal prize”. What was this illegal prize for which he was condemned? It was the receipt of Germany's Nuremberg International Human Rights Award.
The Nuremberg Award is a powerful symbol of that city's denunciation of its dark past and embrace of peace, reconciliation and respect for human rights. That Iran would criminalize such an award is a striking testament to the culture of repression that reigns today in Ahmadinejad's Iran.
Mr. Soltani's imprisonment was followed by the imprisonment of another human rights lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, who was a founder of Iran's Centre for Human Rights Defenders.
The latest example of an ever-widening campaign to crush all forms of dissent in Iran are the recent reports by international human rights bodies that describe the regime's systematic use of arrests, beatings, torture, detentions, kidnappings, disappearances and executions.
Just two months ago, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran released a scathing report documenting in his words, a “striking pattern of violations of fundamental human rights”. In a mocking and almost obscene retort, the Iranian leadership in response characterized itself, and I am using its words, as “a pioneer in human rights”. It might well have characterized itself as a pioneer in human rights assaults.
For example, Iran, which already has the highest per capita rate of executions in the world, is engaged, as we meet, in an ongoing execution binge, even by its own wanton standards with more than 60 people having been executed in January 2012 alone, a pace of execution that is continued. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of executions from less than 100 cases in 2003 to at least 670 in 2011. That too will be surpassed in 2012 if the rate of execution continues as it has.
Moreover, Iran's religious an ethnic minorities, already victims of massive de facto and de jure discrimination, are disproportionately represented among the ranks of the imprisoned and condemned. As of this writing and as we meet, 15 members of the Kurdish community have been sentenced to death on such trumped-up charges as corruption on earth and espionage. While the announcement that Iran has upheld a death sentence against Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, convicted of apostasy for abandoning Islam, has not only stunned Christian groups in Islam, it has also been attended by the recently targeted assault on the Christian communities in Iran.
As I have said, but it bears repetition, yet again we are witness to the imprisonment of the entire Baha'i leadership, not only its political leadership but its educational leadership, some of whom are even graduates of Canadian universities; the exclusion of and discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities generally; the imprisonment and silencing of more journalists, bloggers and filmmakers than any other country; the persistent and pervasive assault on the women's rights movement and the imprisonment of the women's rights leaders; the criminalization of fundamental freedoms of speech, association and assembly; and the assaults upon and imprisonment of student leaders.
As we meet, there has been a crackdown and arrest in the last month alone of student leaders and trade union leaders. There have been assaults on filmmakers, artists and culture generally, in effect, the shutting down also of all independent civic organizations, NGOs and the like. In particular—
Human Rights in Tibet May 14th, 2012
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate His Holiness the Dalai Lama upon receiving the prestigious Templeton Prize in London today. This prize honours a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to “affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”, recognizing the Dalai Lama's great involvement in the just causes of our time and the encouragement of scientific research and inter-religious harmony and co-operation across the globe.
I recently met with the Dalai Lama here in Ottawa at the Sixth World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet, where His Holiness reaffirmed his desire for dialogue with Chinese authorities and for their respect for Tibetan autonomy and identity in accordance with Chinese law, and this against a backdrop of increased Chinese repression of Tibetans, leading to the self-immolation of more than three dozen monks.
I trust that all parliamentarians will join me in congratulating His Holiness on this most deserved prize and call for an end to human rights abuses in Tibet, the protection of religious and ethnic rights therein and the release of political prisoners.
Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act May 3rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, what is disconcerting is not only the overall approach with respect to environmental protection, or the absence regarding environmental protection, but the prospective chilling effect that the critiques of critics have on the overall discussion of this issue as a whole.
We saw the same thing with regard to Bill C-10. We see the same thing with regard to Bill C-26.
There is a pattern here in which those who criticize the government, if it is in matters of criminal justice, are said to be on the side of the criminals and not on the side of the victims, or on the side of the child pornographers and not on the side of those who seek to protect children.
This kind of indictment, and it is not even by innuendo but indeed indictment, by chilling debate, by silencing dissent, does credit neither to the substance of the legislation, which should be allowed to be debated on the merits, and there is no more compelling concern in that regard than that which relates to the environment, nor to the democratic process itself, which should allow for all forms of discussion, debate, dissent, critique and the like.
We are missing this, not only in this debate but on other bills as well.
Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act May 3rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, it will be very damaging in terms of both the teaching and appreciation of history. However, this is not just about history; we are also talking about getting rid of all the sources of information and every source that has to do with history, science and knowledge. Both members and the public need this information. The public is affected by this decision.
Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act May 3rd, 2012
Mr. Speaker, in truth, we did reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We also introduced a bill in the House to this effect, but it was defeated by the government.
I think that my colleague from Etobicoke North, an expert in the field, will answer that question.