{"id":5814,"date":"2016-10-08T20:10:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-09T01:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=5814"},"modified":"2016-10-08T20:10:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T01:10:41","slug":"call-for-iran-war-crimes-investigation-liberals-urged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/5814\/","title":{"rendered":"Call For Iran War Crimes Investigation, Liberals Urged"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CP <\/span> \u00a0|\u00a0 By Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press <\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\"Ahmad<\/a>
Ahmad Hassani holds up a picture of his brother Mahmoud Hassani, who he says was executed in 1988, as Shahram Golestaneh, right, looks on as they represent the Iranian-Canadian community during a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016, to shed light on the human rights situation in Iran. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Sean Kilpatrick<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 A group of Iranian-Canadians is calling on the government to add a tough new element to its annual United Nations resolution on Iran’s dubious human rights record \u2014 a call for an international war crimes investigation.<\/p>\n

The group, which calls itself Canadian Friends for a Democratic Iran, made the request Thursday at a news conference on Parliament Hill.<\/p>\n

The group presented what it says is new evidence that shows complicity by senior Iranian government officials in a mass killing of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An audio recording from the era surfaced in August that implicates high-level members of the current Iranian regime, including the country’s justice minister, said Shahram Golestaneh, the group’s director.<\/p>\n

Canada has taken the lead each year since 2003 in sponsoring a resolution at the UN condemning Iran’s human rights record.<\/p>\n

That was the year that Iranian-born, Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured and killed in a Tehran prison after she was arrested for photographing a demonstration.<\/p>\n

Now, Golestaneh’s group wants the government to up the ante by asking the UN to launch an investigation into the 1988 massacre as part of that annual resolution.<\/p>\n

“Normalizing relations with Iran before these individuals are held accountable is completely unacceptable.”<\/strong>
\n\u2014 Tory MP Candice Berge<\/strong>n<\/small><\/span><\/h3>\n

A trio of Conservative MPs joined Golestaneh’s group at the news conference and urged the government not to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran. The former Conservative government broke off ties with Iran in 2012, citing a lack of security for embassy staff, the country’s poor human rights record and its support of terrorism.<\/p>\n

“Normalizing relations with Iran before these individuals are held accountable is completely unacceptable,” said Conservative MP Candice Bergen.<\/p>\n

She said it’s unwise foreign policy on the part of Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion and Liberals.<\/p>\n

The government has yet to re-open Canada’s embassy or allow Iranian diplomats back into Canada, but has said engaging countries that it disagrees with is not a sign that it approves of their non-democratic policies.<\/p>\n

Shahin Gobadi, a Paris-based dissident with the National Council of<\/p>\n

Resistance of Iran, acknowledged that any call for a war crimes investigation would likely fall on deaf ears in Tehran.<\/p>\n

Former Liberal MP pushes Grits on Saudi Arabia<\/strong><\/p>\n

But he said: “It would also send a strong message internationally that one cannot get away with crimes against humanity.”<\/p>\n

It was the second straight day that the Trudeau government faced calls to use its new embrace of the United Nations to take a tough stand on human rights.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, a delegation led by former Liberal MP Irwin Cotler called on the government to oppose Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia and China in the upcoming voting for United Nations Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n

“Canada will announce its decision in due time, but what I can say is that the strong voice of Canadians speaking for human rights is something we also consider, especially when you have a champion like Irwin Cotler,” Dion said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CP \u00a0|\u00a0 By Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press OTTAWA \u2014 A group of Iranian-Canadians is calling on the government to add a tough new element […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-human-rights","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5816,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5814\/revisions\/5816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}