Article content continued

The Canadian government can play an important role

“We want you to sanction all the oppressors,” said Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist, author activist and founder of the White Wednesday campaign for women’s freedom.

“When Iranian women are fighting back the oppressors and oppressive laws, they do not hesitate to raise their voices,” Alinejad said. “They risk their lives because they know freedom is not free.”

She was joined by Shaparak Shajarizadeh, who was sentenced to 20 years for leading protests for women’s rights, and was granted asylum in Canada with her son.

“The Canadian government can play an important role in supporting us,” against the “mafia regime” of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, said Maryam Shafipour, who served several months in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison and was sentenced to seven years for political activism, but released early in 2015.

Cotler said the problem has lately intensified along with the “global resurgence of authoritarianism,” and it represents an “unprecedented assault on human rights in Iran amidst a culture of impunity.”

“We need to make the question of the massive domestic repression in Iran a justice and foreign policy priority on each of our government agenda as a matter of principle and policy,” Cotler said.

Photo by Handout/khamenei.ir/AFP/Getty Images

In an interview, he emphasized that the goal is not sanctions on the Iranian people, but rather against the corrupt “architects” of human rights abuses “on behalf of the Iranian people.”

The 19 men identified in the Raoul Wallenberg Centre report include Iran’s Ministers of Intelligence; Justice; the Interior; Culture and Islamic Guidance; Information and Communications Technology; and Science, Research and Technology. They also include the Chief of the Law Enforcement Force, Prosecutor General of Tehran, head of the Basij militia, Chief Justice and various senior officials.