Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Maybe I could give a legal distinction. Anti-Semitism is a set of human rights violations, a wide variety of forms of discrimination against the Jewish community. Anti-Zionism is the rejection of one particular Jewish right, the right to self-determination of peoples. There is

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would say anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. It's a very particular one. I would say—but of course what Michael says is true—once you're Jewish you're suspected of being Zionist and so the anti-Zionists impose a wide range of violations on Jews as suspected anti-Zionists

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, sure. To a certain extent it relates to a previous comment that was made: when we're dealing with political prisoners, they're not political in our sense; they're just seen as political by the regime. By way of a concluding comment, I just want to say that I am pleased that

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I know that Amnesty International has a definition of a “prisoner of conscience”, who is a person being detained only for his conscientiously held beliefs and not for any acts of violence. I think that's pretty straightforward.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Again, this is a concept you find in the refugee convention. A political prisoner is not somebody who has a political opinion. A political prisoner may have no opinion, or may actually support the regime. But as long as the regime thinks or perceives you're the enemy and they th

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Why don't we let somebody else start this?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In terms of legal remedies, obviously there is no legal remedy in Iran. In terms of international remedies through the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, there might be a remedy through the International Court of Justice through the genocide conve

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The numbers have slowly decreased over the years. In 1948 there were a variety of estimates; we don't have an official census, but probably the best figure is from the Jewish Agency, which had an office in Tehran at the time, and they said between 100,000 and 120,000. At one poin

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Iran has been using Hamas for its anti-Israel agenda. Iran is Shia and Hamas is Sunni, so there is this divide between them. Hamas suffered as a result of the last war. A lot of the infrastructure was destroyed. Iran has been arming them and egging them on. Occasionally Israel i

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  First of all, I apologize, Mr. Chair. I didn't really properly introduce myself at the beginning, but I'm an immigration lawyer in Winnipeg. I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that there's no embassy in Tehran, because that means there's no visa office in Tehran. Afghanistan

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If you look at the overall statistics, not good; some individual cases get some movement, and the sanctions.... Unfortunately, as I say, we have a wide menu of agenda items to pursue in dealing with human rights violations in Iran. What's taken the priority, perhaps understandab

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Well, of course this is a constant problem. I mean, we did have a Canadian reporter, Kazemi, who was killed there. It's much more difficult for reporters to access violations where the reporters are personally risking their lives to do so. It's a lot easier to report on situation

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  They can't go to Israel because there are exit controls in Iran, and the Iranians wouldn't let them go. They could potentially go to another country, and then from another country go to Israel, but they'd have to disguise their intention. The official position of Iran is that I

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  My perception is no. I think we've seen a change of vocabulary without a change in behaviour. La Rochefoucauld said, “hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue”, and I think what we're seeing now is a different language, but we're seeing the same level of human rights vio

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think it's 800,000 from Arab countries. Iran, which is Muslim but not Arab, is in addition. If you add up the Arab numbers, it's another 100,000; we're getting close to a million. The numbers are huge. In fact, there were more people displaced from the initial 1948 war, Jews f