The Canadian government’s decision to close its embassy in Iran and expel
Iranian diplomats from Canada is as important for the reasons underlying the
decision as for the decision itself. In a word, Iran has emerged as a clear and
present danger to international peace and security. The Iranian threat is
fourfold.
Iran is in standing violation of international law prohibiting
nuclear weaponization; 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 finally, Iran is engaged in the
massive domestic repression of the rights of its own people.
Certainly
three other considerations underpinned the Canadian decision: Iran’s complicity
in Syria’s atrocities; Iran’s complicity in assaults upon diplomats from Central
Asia to Central America; and the intimidation of Canadian- Iranians living in
Canada.
The decision highlights – and indeed calls for – a set of
initiatives to combat these Iranian threats, including:
• Listing the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist entity under Canadian law – something
the federal government has yet to do;
• Enhancing sanctions for Iran’s defiance
of international law in its nuclear weaponization program;
• Sanctioning major
human rights violators in the Iranian political and juridical leadership for
their criminal violations of the human rights of the Iranian people; and
•
Undertaking mandated legal remedies under international law to hold the Iranian
leadership accountable for its state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, which
has intensified dramatically of late.
In this last regard, UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon has, yet again, issued a statement condemning the recent
“offensive and inflammatory statements” of the Iranian
leadership.
Curiously, while the statement also cited international law
as the authority for the condemnation – that “in accordance with the United
Nations Charter, all members must refrain from the threat or use of force
against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” – it
failed to appreciate that international law requires juridical action to
sanction such incitement, not just issue mere statements of
disapproval.
The most recent offensive and inflammatory statements
emanated from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who characterized Israel as
an “insult to humanity” and “a cancerous tumor” while calling, yet again, for
its “disappearance.”
These followed the no-less-incendiary remarks from
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni demonizing Israel as “the Zionist
cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world,” while also calling for its
“annihilation.”
What is missing in statements expressing disapproval of
Iran’s words and actions – including those from the EU, US, Canada, France,
Germany and others – is a commitment to action. And let me be clear up front:
action in this regard need not be military; indeed, the remedy is
juridical.
In a word, the Genocide Convention – framed in 1948, in the
wake of the Holocaust – prohibits the crime of “direct and public incitement to
commit genocide.” Incitement itself is the crime, whether or not genocide
follows. The objective is to prevent genocides before they occur, by sounding
the alarm on this type of state-sanctioned incendiary incitement that has in the
past led us down the road to horrific tragedy and atrocity, as it did in Rwanda,
Srebrenica and Darfur.
The Iranian regime’s criminal incitement has been
long documented. An all-party report of the Standing Committee on Foreign
Affairs of the Canadian Parliament found that “Iran has already committed the
crime of incitement to genocide prohibited under the Genocide
Convention.”
Yet not one state party to the convention has undertaken any
of its mandated responsibilities to prevent and punish such incitement – an
appalling example of the international community as bystander that reminds us
also that genocide occurred not only because of cultures of hate, but because of
crimes of indifference.
Closing our embassy will not stop this incendiary
incitement.
Neither will it sanction it; that is something that can only
happen by exercising the required juridical remedies provided in international
law.
Such remedies include: Initiating an inter-state complaint against
Iran – which is a state party to the Genocide Convention – before the
International Court of Justice, for its standing violation of the convention;
referring this genocidal incitement to the UN Security Council for
accountability and sanction; calling upon the UN secretary-general to refer the
situation to the Security Council as one that threatens international peace and
security, pursuant to Article 99 of the UN Charter; and requesting that the
Security Council itself refer the matter to the prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, who can indict Iranian leaders as it has others.
Simply
put, this panoply of juridical remedies – which have brought about the
indictment of seemingly immune dictatorial leaders – should be added to the
existing political, diplomatic and economic initiatives invoked to sanction
Iran’s nuclear weaponization program, where such state-sanctioned incitement to
genocide is the terrifying and vilifying context in which Iran’s nuclear
weaponization is being accelerated.
Silence is not an option when states
threaten genocide – especially when, like Iran, they are on the verge of
acquiring nuclear weapons and even boast that they can thereby bring about a
Holocaust “in a matter of minutes.” Condemnation has not served as an
effective deterrent.
The time for action is now. The exemplary
case made by the Canadian government for closing its embassy in Iran is the same
case warranting these targeted remedies.
Irwin Cotler is chairman of the
Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran and international chairman of
the Responsibility to Prevent Coalition. He is a member of the International
Advisory Board of United Against a Nuclear Iran and co-chairman of the Global
Iranian Political Prisoner Advocacy Project. He has written extensively on Iran.