Irwin Cotler

[Committees of the House, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to concur with the remarks of my colleague. Iran has been a great civilization. It has made an enormous contribution to humankind, and indeed, humankind internationally. We are all the beneficiaries of that great civilization. It was only as a result of the witness testimony and documentary evidence, to which I referred, that the foreign affairs committee's Subcommittee on International Human Rights, taking note, as I quote, and I will read this into the record:

on the persistent and pervasive assault on the human rights of the Baha'i community in Iran, alarmed by the escalation of the prosecution and persecution of the Baha'i leadership, alarmed further by the state-backed demonization of and incitement against the Baha'i community in Iran, resolves to take all necessary measures both domestically and internationally to address and redress this state-backed assault on the human rights of the Baha'i community.

We stand in solidarity with the Iranian people who are themselves the objects of mass targeted repression domestically by the Iranian government. We stand with them as we stand with the Baha'i. Our critique is solely of those who have assumed the leadership since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

Again, we hold no brief against Islam. On the contrary, we see Islam as a peaceful religion that has made contributions to humankind, as have the Iranian people and the Iranian civilization. We single out only those in the government who have embarked upon this state-backed policy of persecution and prosecution of a minority solely on the basis of their religious faith and heritage.

[Committees of the House, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the motion that itself arose initially from the witness testimony and documentary evidence both before the foreign affairs subcommittee on human rights and beyond, to which my colleague, the member for Davenport, referred, which demonstrated that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Baha'is have faced a systematic and state-orchestrated campaign of religious persecution and prosecution in their Iranian homeland, indeed a persistent and pervasive assault on their fundamental rights protected under international covenants to which Iran is a state party, again referred to by my colleague.

In its early stages, more than 200 Baha'is were killed and at least 1,000 imprisoned, targeted solely because of their religious beliefs. In the early 1990s the government shifted its focus to the systematic deprivation of social, economic and cultural rights, impeding and obstructing the development of the Baha'i community, including measures to deprive the Baha'i of their livelihood and to destroy their cultural heritage—in a word, to disenfranchise the Baha'i from equal participation in all aspects of Iranian life.

Most important, in the last several years there has been a resurgence of more extreme forms of persecution directed at the 300,000 members of the Baha'i community in Iran, that country's largest minority.

This upsurge has alarmed human rights scholars and monitors who fear not only for the Baha'i community affected by the government's renewed campaigns of hatred and incitement, but also that such attacks portend something worse, that they constitute a number of warning signs that often foreshadow widespread ethnic, racial or religious cleansing, including—and these are some of the warning signs—the exclusionary “classification” of minority groups into categories of “us versus them”; the singling out of the Baha'i for special opprobrium and repression; the use of the state media to dehumanize and demonize the Baha'i among their fellow Iranians; the orchestration of hate groups for targeted intimidation and fear; the proliferation of assaults on members of the Baha'i community, their homes and their properties; the ongoing denial of higher education to Baha'i youth; the manifold restrictions on their right to a livelihood; the ongoing attempts to destroy their religious, cultural and spiritual heritage; the arrest and imprisonment, as referred to by my colleague, the member for Davenport, of national-level Baha'i leaders in March and May 2008 in a manner that is eerily similar to the events of the 1980s when scores of Baha'i leaders were rounded up and killed; the whole reflected and foreshadowed in the public disclosure in March 2006, referred to in our motion, by a United Nations official of a governmental plan instructing state intelligence services, police units and the Revolutionary Guard to make “a comprehensive and complete report of all activities of the Baha'i sect for the purpose of identifying all individuals of this misguided sect”.

As Asma Jahangir, United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion, put it, “such monitoring constitutes an impermissible and unacceptable interference with the rights of members of religious minorities”, while others characterized these orders as reminiscent of the steps taken against the Jews in Europe and a dangerous step toward the institution of Nuremberg-type laws.

All this stereotyping, denigrating and demonizing is of a religious minority that itself has the highest respect for all religions.

As the Baha'i international community has put it in its own communication to the Iranian government:

Our Writings refer to Islam as “the blessed and luminous religion of God” and the Prophet Muhammad as “the refulgent lamp of supreme Prophethood,” “the Lord of creation” and “the Day-star of the world,” Who, “through the will of God, shone forth from the horizon of Hijaz.” The station of Imam Ali is described in terms such as “the moon of the heaven of knowledge and understanding” and “the sovereign of the court of knowledge and wisdom.”

I will close by reading into the record an excerpt from a heroic open letter by a group of Iranian academics, writers, artists, journalists and activists throughout the world to the Baha'i community, a letter signed by more than 300 of the most prominent Iranian intellectuals. It reads as follows, and I am only excerpting from it:

We are ashamed...

As Iranian human beings, we are ashamed for what has been perpetrated upon the Baha'is in the last century and a half in Iran...

According to historical documents and evidence, from the commencement of the Babi Movement followed by the appearance of the Baha'i Faith, thousands of our countrymen have been slain by the sword of bigotry and superstition only for their religious beliefs. Just in the first decades of its establishment, some twenty thousand of those who stood identified with this faith community were savagely killed throughout various regions of Iran.

We are ashamed that during that period, no voice of protest against these barbaric murders was registered...

We are ashamed that in addition to the intense suppression of Baha'is during its formative decades, the last century also witnessed periodic episodes of persecution of this group of our countrymen, in which their homes and businesses were set on fire, and their lives, property and families were subjected to brutal persecution--but all the while, the intellectual community of Iran remained silent;

We are ashamed that during the last thirty years, the killing of Baha'is solely on the basis of their religious beliefs has gained legal status and over two-hundred Baha'is have been slain on this account...

We are ashamed of our silence that after many decades of service to Iran, Baha'i retired persons have been deprived of their right to a pension...

We are ashamed of our silence over this painful reality that in our nation, Baha'is are systematically oppressed and maligned, a number of them are incarcerated because of their religious convictions, their homes and places of business are attacked and destroyed, and periodically their burial places are desecrated;

We are ashamed of our silence when confronted with the long, dark and atrocious record that our laws and legal system have marginalized and deprived Baha'is of their rights, and the injustice and harassment of both official and unofficial organs of the government towards this group of our countrymen;

We are ashamed for all these transgressions and injustices, and we are ashamed for our silence over these deeds.

They close with:

We, the undersigned, asked you, the Baha'is, to forgive us for the wrongs committed against the Baha'i community of Iran.

We will no longer be silent when injustice is visited upon you.

We stand by you in achieving all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights.

And in a closing, heroic expression and clarion call:

Let us join hands in replacing hatred and ignorance with love and tolerance.

[Foreign Affairs, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the fact that this case is being litigated does not absolve the government of its responsibility to follow the law. There is no closed hearing on this case, and Canadians have a right to know.

How does the government purport to justify its action when international law allows Mr. Abdelrazik's return and our own Constitution compels it?

Will the government respect the rule of law? Yes or no?

[Foreign Affairs, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Abdelrazik is a Sudanese Canadian who has been stranded in Khartoum for six years. The government now says that Mr. Abdelrazik needs to be removed from a UN watch list before he can come home, even though the watch list expressly allows for a citizen to return to his home country, even though CSIS and the RCMP have cleared Mr. Abdelrazik, and even though the government has a constitutional obligation to allow Mr. Abdelrazik to come home.

Will the Canadian government protect a Canadian citizen, respect its obligations under the charter and international law, and allow Mr. Abdelrazik to come home to Canada and be reunited with his family?

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. member referred to me personally saying that I knew of the brutality in detention at the time of Mr. Khadr. I said specifically in my remarks that the brutality in detention became known afterwards. I said that I knew the nature of Guantanamo Bay at the time and, with respect to Guantanamo Bay, I said that was reason enough for us to look at the situation in a manner that perhaps at the time would have warranted a different approach.

This needs to be clarified as well. I said that the former prime minister of the government in which I served said that in retrospect maybe we erred because all the things that have emerged since we were no longer the government, which the government of the day refuses to acknowledge, even in this statement now. We have two supreme court decisions, one in the United States and the other in Canada, all the evidence with regard to brutality in detention; the Military Commissions Act; the military commissions tribunal, and I can go on. All this occurred under the present government's watch.

The government should take responsibility rather than try to defer it to somebody else.

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we do not want to interfere with the legal process. We want to do what that legal process invites us to do and, indeed, requires us to do.

This is something that we should have done under the previous American administration but we kept saying that it was premature. Even though during that previous American administration we had both an American supreme court decision and a Canadian Supreme Court decision that warranted his repatriation, we did not move.

I am saying that what President Obama has done has opened the door for us to now do it. In terms of where the proceeding should take place, there should be no doubt. All these violations, regrettably, occurred under the American system, under which he languished for six years.

We should finally repatriate him as a Canadian citizen, as a child soldier under international humanitarian law so that he faces justice here. In doing so, we would be taking another person off the hands of the decision makers in the American administration.

Why have European governments lined up to take detainees at Guantanamo Bay to their countries, even though they have no connection to these detainees? It makes it easier for President Obama to address that issue. We have a Canadian citizen who has languished there for six years and we cannot bring ourselves to repatriate our own citizen who is the only western national still in that prison system.

At this point I cannot understand on what basis the government continues to act in this way. It would seem that justice and politics would require them to alter its position.

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it appears that the irresponsibility goes back one step earlier, and that is that the government continued to maintain, for a long period of time, that to do anything with respect to Mr. Khadr under the previous American administration was “premature”. It was not premature for all the reasons I mentioned.

Certainly once President Obama took the actions he did, it was not only no longer premature but then became necessary from the point of view of justice and even politics for us to seek his repatriation. The government of the day should not now speculate whatsoever on the nature of Mr. Khadr's guilt or innocence because the one thing that is clear, leaving aside the issues of guilt or innocence, is the entire gamut of his rights as a child soldier standing accused were violated both in terms of international humanitarian law and domestic American law.

When President Obama moved to rectify the situation, generically speaking, by ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay by banning torture and the like, that gave the Conservative government the opportunity to go ahead and do that which was just and right. We trust it will now do it.

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is correct with respect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Not only is Mr. Khadr a child soldier but he is presumed to have been recruited illegally, to have served involuntarily and, therefore, to now have to face justice with that understanding and appreciation in mind.

That is why, in all of this, his being a Canadian citizen is one that warrants his repatriation to Canada so he can face the Canadian justice system, which, as a Canadian citizen, he is entitled to, but after the particular illegalities that attended his six years in the American justice system, which President Obama finally repudiated.

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

I do not dodge any questions, Mr. Speaker. I answer them exactly.

In fact, I would refer to the article I wrote in 2002 for the National Journal of Constitutional Law where I stated that I was aware of these matters and that we, as a government, should not become implicated in what is going on in Guantanamo Bay.

Regrettably, I think our government, of which I was a member, did become implicated in what went on in Guantanamo Bay. The former prime minister has said that he regretted to whatever extent we became implicated.

However, the key thing here, which is what the government is ignoring, is that all the matters of which I spoke this morning, the American supreme court decision, the Canadian Supreme Court decision and all rules of law emerged on the current government's watch. We should not make this into a partisan thing. It is a matter of justice and the government should do the right thing.

[Committees of the House, March 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my writings on this are public. I would refer the hon. minister to those writings.