Amnesty International has called 2018 Iran’s “year of shame” for widespread crackdowns on dissidents standing up to the fundamentalist regime.
The Trudeau government has not commented on Amnesty International’s report, nor has it outright condemned the Islamic Republic of Iran for its grave human rights abuses.
Over 7,000 individuals were arrested by Iranian authorities last year. Among them were political dissidents, religious minorities, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, students, teenagers, women’s rights activists and others.
In the early months of 2018, people across the country took to the streets to protest against Iran’s tyrannical dictatorship and its incompetent theocratic rulers.
Protests flared over rising inflation and government mismanagement, as well as Iran’s policy to bankroll foreign wars and terrorist entities like Hezbollah and Hamas while neglecting its own citizens and further isolating Iran from the U.S. and the West.
The Iranian regime responded by firing on crowds of civilians with live ammunition and orchestrating thousands of mass arrests.
“The staggering scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent,” said Philipx Luther of Amnesty International.
Human rights advocates are frequently subjected to torture after being detained and facing kangaroo courts. One activist, Shaparak Shajarizadeh, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for protesting Iran’s archaic forced hijab laws.
She has since escaped Iran and has been advocating for Iranian women’s rights since being in exile. Last year, 112 women who protested the law forcing women to wear a hijab were arrested or remain in detention.
Journalists have also been targeted by the Iranian regime.
One reporter who is also a part of Iran’s Dervish minority, Mohammad Hossein Sodagar, was flogged 74 times after a conviction for “spreading lies.”
Likewise Mostafa Abdi, an administrator of a minority rights website, was sentenced to 148 lashes and over 26 years in prison for propaganda and national security charges.
No matter the cause, Iranians who protest their government risk torture, arbitrary imprisonment and even death. Several suspicious deaths have raised international alarms. According to Amnesty International, nine people have died in custody in 2018.
Despite the gross human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime against its own people, Canada’s government has done very little to condemn or punish Iran for its actions.
While the U.S. government imposed stricter sanctions against Iran, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lifted many of Canada’s sanctions against the authoritarian regime.
When the U.S. pulled out of the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, Trudeau opposed the decision.
During the widespread protests in Iran, Liberal MP Majid Jowhari asked that dissidents and protestors work alongside their “elected government” to have their concerns heard, despite the fact that the Iranian regime is a theocratic dictatorship and Iran has not had free or fair elections in decades.
While the Iranian regime has stepped up its campaign of terror, the Trudeau government has continuously sought to further Canada’s relations with the tyrannical regime Iran — even arranging official talks to attempt to re-open diplomatic relations.
