By JENNY HAZAN, CJN Israel Bureau
JERUSALEM ? Liberal MP Irwin Cotler released a petition calling on the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and the International Court of Justice to
impose sanctions on Iran.
Some 25 foreign and local journalists, dignitaries and human rights activists gathered at the King David Hotel on Dec. 30 for the release of the petition, which was drafted by the former justice
minister.
The petition was timed one day before U.S. President Barack Obama's deadline for Iran to show progress in meeting international requirements that it end its nuclear weapons program.
Cotler's petition is not only a call to action to respond to the Iran's nuclear program. It is also a call to respond to Iran's state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, its support of
international terrorism and its massive domestic human rights violations.
?The evidence is clear. Iran has defied and mocked the international community. Iran is in standing violation of international legal prohibitions against the development and proliferation of
nuclear weapons. Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide, and Iran is engaged in widespread and systematic violations of the rights of its own people,? Cotler said.
?This petition is the sounding alarm, a wake-up call to the international community. The time to act is now.?
Attending the release were the executive director of the Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group Bassem Eid and, via teleconference, Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and British
MP Dennis MacShane.
Cotler is one of more than 60 petition signatories, including Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel; former Swedish deputy prime minister and expert on genocide, Per Ahlmark; Darfur survivor and Sudanese
member of parliament, Salih Mahmoud Osman; leading Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Edin Ibrahim, and former Israeli MK and human rights advocate Amnon Rubenstein.
Canadians signatories include former prime minister John Turner; former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, and a specialist in international law, Prof. Fayam Acavam.
A significant number of Canadian signatories are of Iranian descent. ?The signatories to the petition are not mainly Jewish. Many are non-Jewish, members of the Iranian diaspora, and leading
figures in the Arab and Muslim worlds,? Cotler said.
?It's one thing for me to endorse this petition. It's another thing for an Iranian Canadian to do so.?
The 156-page document, called The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent, is split into two parts. The first part offers evidence of the state's
transgressions: its nuclear weapons program, its state-sanctioned incitement to genocide and its domestic human rights violations.
The second part is a 12-point ?road map' on how to remedy the situation. Each point deals with different type of sanctions, including those that could be imposed through domestic and
international law and diplomatic measures, as well as sanctions that are economic and investment-related.
?[This petition] is the most comprehensive and compelling witness testimony and documentary evidence ever released on the nature of the Iranian threat, and it's the most detailed set of
recommendations for action by the international community,? Cotler said.
The list of violations, aside from those related to the nuclear program, includes widespread killing and torture, assault on women's rights, detention and murder of political dissidents,
coerced confessions, show trials, demonization of Israel, Holocaust denial and rampant anti-Semitism, as well as an assault on the Baha'i, a religious minority targeted for special oppression by
the regime.
An Interpol arrest warrant is out for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps' minister of defence, Ahmed Wahidi, who is alleged to have headed the attack on the Jewish community centre in Buenos,
Aires, Argentina in 1994.
?You have this absurdly Orwellian act, where a person involved in international terrorism has been appointed defence minister,? Cotler said.
The petition outlines several sanctions aimed at making it harder for Iran to produce nuclear weapons, weakening the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and prohibiting private companies such as Nokia
to facilitate domestic repression. Nokia provides the Guard with surveillance equipment.
One of the sanctions targets gasoline and petroleum imports. Although Iran is the second-largest exporter of oil, it imports some 40 per cent of its gas. ?This is their Achilles heel, a major
economic vulnerability,? Cotler said.
He said the ?time has come to enact sanctions. It cannot just be a declaratory response. [The petition] is not a policy request. It outlines the legal obligations of the international community.
The rights of the Iranian people are under attack and the international community must assume its legal responsibilities.
?Iran is at a tipping point now in respect to regime change. It is the responsibility of the international community to not stand idly by and permit the Revolutionary Guard to assault the Iranian
green movement,? Cotler said, referring to ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Iran.
He said Canada is in a strategic position to promote the petition. Canada, more than any other country in the world, is involved in international political and economic decision-making bodies
such as the UN Security Council, he said. ?Canada takes multilateralism seriously. Canada has a special role to play because of these involvements.?
He added that international law is a ?centrepiece' of Canadian foreign policy, and the petition draws heavily upon international law.
Canada always speaks of itself as having a ?human rights foreign policy' and human rights is another organizing theme of the petition, Cotler said. ?Human rights is part of the Canadian DNA.?
