Tit For Tat
Well, it is quite difficult to say anything remotely positive about the current government in Tehran. Its egregious human rights offences are guaranteed to ensure that most Western democratic nations spurn it as a country one would seek to have good relations with. Even though we manage to hold our collective noses when it comes to "doing business" in the interests of spurring on national economic advances - human-rights abuses aside.In Canada's case in its ongoing sparring about human rights offences with Iran, there is a close connection between the imprisonment, torture, violation and murder of a Canadian citizen. The fact that Canada even expected Iran to fairly investigate the murder of Zahra Kazemi, the Montreal-based photojournalist with joint Iranian-Canadian citizenship, is telling to begin with. It represented a challenge more than it did an expectation to see justice done.
That Iran exemplifies a state that practises brutal repression, that harasses, imprisons, tortures and sometimes kills dissidents, minorities, those whose sexual orientations offend Islam, is beyond question. The country's reliance on vicious assaults against dissenters and critics of its theocratic dominance is well enough known. Its crack-downs on vocal students opposing the state and challenging it to open up to a democratic process is ongoing.
Public executions for capital offences which can only be construed as such in closed societies offend the sense of decency of any free country. Canada's attempts year after year to hold Iran to account for its human rights abuses by bringing international censure on the country through the United Nations has most certainly not endeared it to Iran's lawmakers.
Nor has its twice-refusal to accept Iran's proffered choices as ambassadors to Iran's diplomatic mission to Canada. The official reason being put forth by the Government of Canada and its Foreign Affairs Department being that the two selections have been implicated as being radical student militants during the Iranian Revolution when the U.S. embassy in Tehran was overrun by revolutionary students and its envoys held hostage for 444 days in 1979.
Among whom was none other than the current president of Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad - an Islamist student ring-leader in the surrounding of, then capture of the embassy and its envoys. A revolutionary victory for supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini - after the ouster of the Shah of Iran, and the return from Paris of the exiled Ayatollah - but a blot on the record of the international code of civil recognition and protection of diplomatic missions.
In return Iran has chosen to revoke the credentials of Canada's diplomatic head of mission in Iran. That mission has now been down-graded through Iran's choice, to be led by a lower-level Canadian diplomat. Which has been the prevailing situation at Iran's embassy in Canada - resulting in Iran's attempts to upgrade her mission in Canada.
Now we're even. That's fair, right? That's the essence of diplomacy, correct?
Labels: Canada, Conflict, Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, December 05, 2007
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