You would think the kind of genocidal behavior displayed by the
Ahmadinejad government in Tehran would be in violation of international
law! Well, apparently there are some experts who also think so. The legal
petition for action mentioned in today's cartoon is real. Here's Irwin
Cotler (Canadian Liberal MP and former Justice Minister of Canada) as
quoted in the Ottawa Citizen:
"We are witnessing in Ahmadinejad’s Iran the toxic convergence of
four distinct dangers: the nuclear threat; the genocidal incitement
threat; state-sponsored terrorism; and the systematic and widespread
violations of the rights of the Iranian people.
Accordingly, a consortium of international law scholars, human
rights advocates, former government leaders, parliamentarians and
Iranian activists for democracy and freedom — The Responsibility to
Prevent Coalition — has released a report on the danger of a nuclear,
genocidal, and rights-violating Iran.
Let there be no mistake about it: Iran is in violation of
international legal prohibitions against the development and
proliferation of nuclear weapons; Iran has already committed the crime
of incitement to genocide prohibited under the Genocide Convention; Iran
is a leading state-sponsor of international terrorism; and Iran is
engaged in widespread and systematic violations of the rights of its
people."
In the matter of the Iranian nuclear weaponization program, the
coalition’s report documents Iran’s defiance of international law, and
its serial deception respecting its serial violations, including: the
significant expansion of its uranium enrichment to nuclear weapons-grade
capability; the discovery of its hidden uranium enrichment site at Qom;
its planned development of an archipelago of enriched uranium centres;
and the concern of international experts that Iran is “advancing in its
efforts to construct a nuclear warhead, to develop a missile delivery
system for such a warhead, and a mechanism to detonate such a weapon.”
In the case of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide —
building upon the lessons of Rwanda, the Balkans and Darfur — the report
documents the critical mass of precursors to genocide in Ahmadinejad’s
Iran, constituting thereby not only the prelude to a preventable
tragedy, but a crime in and of itself under international law.
In the matter of state-sponsored terror, the report documents
the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the
epicentre of the Iranian threat. A former head of the IRGC — Ahmad
Vahidi, now Iran’s Defence Minister overseeing Iran’s nuclear program —
was named by Argentina’s judiciary as being responsible for the planning
and perpetration of the greatest terrorist atrocity in Argentina since
the Second World War, the bombing of the Jewish Community Centre in
1994.
In the matter of human rights, the report documents the
widespread and systematic violations of the rights of the Iranian
people, including: the beatings, execution, killing, torture and other
inhumane treatment of Iranians; the systematic and widespread oppression
of a minority — the Bahá’í as a case study; the exclusion of, and
discrimination against, religious and ethnic minorities; the persistent
and pervasive assault on women’s rights; the murder of political
dissidents; the assault on freedom of speech, assembly and association —
including assaults on students, professors, activists and intellectuals.
The list of violations goes on: the imprisonment of more
journalists than any other country in the world; the crackdown against
cyber dissidents; the assault on labour rights; the wanton imposition of
a death penalty, including the execution of more juveniles than any
other country in the world; the denial of gay and lesbian rights — all
of which is accompanied by show trials and coerced confessions, and is
constitutive of crimes against humanity under international law.
There has been an intensification of human rights violations in
Iran since the fraudulent presidential elections last year, including
state-sanctioned escalation in each of the categories detailed above.
There is in Ahmadinejad’s Iran a culture of impunity, the denial of due
process and the absence of an independent judiciary.
Accordingly, the report, drawing on international law principle
and precedent, sets forth a comprehensive set of remedies — smart
sanctions — to punish and contain Ahmadinejad’s Iran. The goal is to
target the Iranian regime and its leaders, while not harming, and indeed
protecting, the Iranian people.
While recognizing the gravity of the Iranian regime’s nuclear
ambitions, we must be careful not to focus on this threat alone and risk
marginalizing the other three threats. It is by recognizing the totality
of the regime’s predations that the case for comprehensive, calibrated,
and consequential sanctions becomes undeniable. The international
community would do well to organize its policy around the findings and
recommendations in this report. Sadly, the perfunctory G8 statement on
Iran appreciated neither the gravity of the threat nor the imperative of
the response.
Irwin Cotler, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General
of Canada, has written and lectured widely on international human rights
law. He is Chair of the Responsibility to Prevent Coalition.
