Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development

Sous-comité des droits internationaux de la personne du Comité permanent des affaires étrangères et du développement international

For immediate release

Ottawa, June 18, 2014 -

The Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Human Rights unanimously adopted a motion condemning the Iranian regime’s widespread and systematic domestic repression of its own people. The motion followed the compelling testimony heard by the Subcommittee during Iran Accountability Week regarding the Iranian regime’s assaults on human rights.

The motion, moved by Committee Vice-Chair Irwin Cotler – who Co-Chaired the All-Party Iran Accountability Week with MPs James Bezan and Paul Dewar – calls on the Iranian regime “to declare a moratorium on wanton executions; to release political prisoners – including the seven imprisoned leaders of the Baha’i community; to cease and desist from the arrest and imprisonment of lawyers, journalists and bloggers; to cease and desist from the persistent and pervasive assault on women’s rights; and to end its systematic criminalization of dissent.”

The motion also calls upon Iran to permit the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran to visit the country and its prisons, and also supports targeted sanctions under section 4.1 of the Canadian Special Economic Measures Act [SEMA] against the major Iranian human rights violators complicit in the massive assaults on human rights.

In the words of the Subcommittee, “The unanimous resolution is as timely as it is compelling, as the ongoing P5+1 nuclear negotiations have been overshadowing, if not sanitizing, the Iranian regime’s massive domestic repression. It also marks the 6th anniversary of the imprisonment of Iran’s Baha’i leadership; an execution binge that has seen over 700 executions since the “moderate” Rouhani ascended to the Presidency in August 2013; and the continuing unjust imprisonment of more than 900 political prisoners, including women, human rights defenders, ethnic and religious leaders, journalists, bloggers, students, trade union leaders – in a word, the leaders of Iranian civil society.”

The unanimous resolution concludes with an expression of “solidarity with the people of Iran . . . the targets and victims of the Iranian regime’s massive assault on human rights”.