The Globe and Mail reports on an effort, led by Canadian MP Irwin Cotler, to enforce sanctions against Iran:
Iranian regime a threat to the world and itself: human-rights activists
The Responsibility to Prevent Coalition, chaired by former Canadian justice minister, urges international community bring Tehran to heel
by Patrick Martin
It may be a woman’s sentence to “death by stoning” that has grabbed international attention, but that’s just the tip of the deadly iceberg when it comes to Iran, says a star-studded group of 100 international law and human-rights activists.
The Responsibility to Prevent Coalition, chaired by former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler, says that a “toxic mix” of four dangerous policy streams has made the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “a clear and present danger to international peace and security … and to its own people.”
Iran’s threat of developing nuclear weapons, its incitement to genocide, sponsorship of terrorism as well the widespread abuse of its own citizens’ rights, add up to a responsibility for the international community to act.
“States have a legal obligation,” said Mr. Cotler, speaking at the coalition’s first press briefing Tuesday in Jerusalem, “to prevent Iran from carrying through with its deadly course of action.”
“This is not just a policy option, but an international legal obligation of the first order,” he emphasized.
“Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide prohibited by the Genocide Convention,” he noted, referring to statements by Mr. Ahmadinejad de-legitimizing Jews in general and Israel in particular. States party to that convention therefore are required to act against any state that violates the convention, and Iran is a signatory of that international treaty.
The RTP Coalition, which includes Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, Lebanese scholar Fouad Ajami, former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin, and Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim among its members, has amassed an impressive dossier of Iran’s alleged violations of the Genocide and other conventions, and other international laws.
As well as citing brutal forms of capital punishment and the murder of political dissidents, the group’s report, entitled The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran, also notes that more juveniles have been executed in Iran in recent years, and more journalists have been imprisoned, than in any other country.
/cijainfo
@CIJAinfo