Mr. Speaker, the remarks I am about to give are like an addendum to what the member for Ottawa Centre said earlier. He spoke to the overview of what is happening in Iran. He spoke about the decades of political instability and the human rights crisis in Iran, which has only deepened. My remarks are going to be a little more pointed to a particular area.
However, I want to be very clear about the NDP's position relative to Iran. We stand in solidarity with the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. We very clearly condemn the human rights violations that are being committed against the people of Iran by the Iranian regime, but we support the Iranian people. Sometimes the messages get mixed.
We also want to express our concerns about the ongoing targeting of particular groups, such as women, gays and lesbians, ethnic and religious minorities, and this takes me to a bit of a transition to speak about the Baha'is. The regime in Iran for a long period of time has singled out the Baha'is for especially bad treatment. It actually pains me to stand in this place once again to discuss that issue.
A number of colleagues and I have spoken extensively on the issue. We heard from the previous speaker about the subcommittee's study of Iran. We heard witness after witness. Shirin Ebadi was one of the witnesses and Dr. Akhavan was another. Sadly, we have to continue this discussion. The systematic terror that has been held over the Baha'is for years is sad.
The last time it was before this place was with respect to the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in March 2009. Other members have spoken to this, but from their beginning, the Baha'is have been persecuted. Iran is the birthplace of that particular religion. In Iran, they are not free to practise their religion. They are denied access to education, public sector employment, and pensions. They are systematically excluded from the country's economy. Everywhere they turn, there is a wall put up in front of them. In fact, the founder of the Baha'i religion, known to the followers as Bahá'u'lláh, spent the last 40 years of his life either in prison or in exile.
Baha'is are routinely executed. Others are arrested arbitrarily with no clear reason for it. Worst of all, this is done with the full support of the country's judicial, administrative and law enforcement systems. The mullahs of Iran have long regarded the Baha'i faith almost as an enemy of Islam. According to a report from Amnesty International, at the end of January 2012, over 80 Baha'is were held because of their beliefs.
I want to go back for a moment to the 1950s. At that time, there were organized anti-Baha'i campaigns that resulted in mob violence and the destruction of religious sites. Nearly 30 years later, after the revolution, the anti-Baha'i propaganda became increasingly systematic, creating stereotypes that still exist. Whenever the regime wants a distraction, the Baha'is are like the magician waving his hand while the regime resorts to other issues that it does not want its citizens to consider. The mullahs categorize the Baha'i faith as a political threat to their regime. This group of people has been so marginalized, how in the world could the Baha'is possibly pose a legitimate threat to that regime?
According to a recent report from the UN office on the Baha'i International Community, Baha'is are obsessively portrayed in official propaganda as the source of every conceivable evil. The report speaks about how the regime views the Baha'is. They are branded as social pariahs to be shunned by the regime.
The propaganda is shocking in its volume and vehemence. Its scope and sophistication is calculated to stir up and antagonize the whole population, to stir them in a way that has only happened one other time in history, which was very similar to this. It happened against the Jews in Germany.
After 30 years of hate propaganda, the Baha'is have become a kind of all-purpose scapegoat, a smear of convenience, which the Iranian government uses against any individual or group it disapproves of as though the mere mention of the word Baha'i conjures up the most lurid forms of immorality that one can imagine.
Of course, with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the situation has only worsened.
A little over a month ago, Iranian authorities reimposed an already harsh sentence on seven Baha'i leaders who had been arrested in 2008 on charges of espionage against Israel for insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the system. The seven previously had their sentences cut from 20 years to 10 years by an Iranian appeal court only to have the regime, quite vindictively I must say, overturn it and restore that original sentence. This is the latest example of the entrenched discrimination faced by the Baha'i minorities in Iran. That was said by Malcolm Stuart of Amnesty International.
I was just about to note that Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi twice appeared before our subcommittee on human rights and spoke to us about the situation in Iran. Each time we wondered if we would see this woman again. She knew and we knew her life was at risk due to what she was doing. When she went back to her country to represent some of the people who had been detained, it became so bad that it is my understanding that she had to close her office and leave the country.
One of the things that happens is the terror that can be brought about by the unexpected. Our door gets kicked in in the middle of the night and the intruders say that they have to search our place. We wonder what they are searching for. We wonder what we have I done or whether we have done anything. We wonder if we need to do anything. No, these people are Baha'i and that is all they need to be for that kind of thing to happen to them in their country. At least 50 Baha'i-owned stores have recently been searched in order to find some excuse to threaten or, worse, to arrest the owners.
I have a summary of some of the persecutions. The harassment of the Baha'is is pervasive and includes incidents of arrest and detention with imprisonment lasting for days, months and, in many cases, years. In cases where Baha'is were released, substantial bail was required for them to even get out. It sounds like a bribe. Sounds like just one more way to marginalize the people as well. There is always direct intimidation. When people are being questioned by the Iranian authorities, they are intimidated. Just the fact that they come to people's door and kick it in is intimidating. Sometimes the questioning includes high intensity lights and physical mistreatment.
What also happens during these searches is that innocent materials are confiscated, materials that are unrelated to their faith. Those who have had their homes burglarized will tell us that the sense of invasion that happens to them when somebody breaks in leaves them in a state of terror sometimes for weeks, months and maybe years. One can just imagine when it is the authorities, those people who are supposed to protect us and work with us.
Children are not left aside in this. They are expelled from school, harassed and even prohibited from attending university.
In court proceedings where Baha'is are accused of promoting propaganda against the government for the benefit of the Baha'i sect is another area where all kinds of aggressive techniques are used against them and this is used as one of excuses. Their bank accounts, movements, activities and whatever they are doing daily are monitored. The other thing that happens is that they go to their neighbours and ask their neighbours to “watch these people”. If we can imagine 30 more years of that kind of propaganda and the neighbours are already suspicious.
