Proscribing Elite Members of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps Entry to Canada
"By officially designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, Canada can join the United States in once again contributing to the global fight against terrorism, demonstrating a strong commitment to ensuring peace and stability.""In both words and deeds, the IRGC as an entity is ideologically committed to destroying Israel and undermining U.S.-Canadian security interests in the Middle East and around the world.""The October 7, 2023 terrorist massacre by Hamas killed Israeli, American and Canadian citizens, and it was made possible by Iran and the IRGC, which have supported Canadian-designated Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas with arms, training and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for years."U.S. Republican and Democratic Congressional Representatives"Canada is well known for not being able to actually implement the sanctions that it announces. Our allies know this and it annoys them, and the bad guys know this and it makes them smile.""You're talking about hundreds of thousands of IRGC veterans. You are talking about a lot of conscripts among those IRGC vets, some of whom would have been cooks in 1996 or something like that."Thomas Juneau, associate professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa"When drafting our terrorism laws we made a choice that we would not deal with the conduct of militaries or parties to a conflict under the criminal law, but would instead look to international law to sanction or punish unlawful conduct."Leah West, assistant professor, national security law, Carleton University
Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend a military drill in the Aras area, East Azerbaijan province, Iran, October 19, 2022. The European Union is considering whether to join United States and officially designate the militia group as a terrorist organization. So far, Canada has refused. (IRGC/WANA/Reuters) |
Canada's
prime minister Justin Trudeau was directly asked by fourteen American
Congressmen through a group-signatured letter to officially designate
the Islamic Republic Guard Corps of Iran as a terrorist group. Canadian
parliamentarians beat them to it by a long shot, having much earlier
demanded that their government commit to such a move, only to be ignored
by the Trudeau Liberals.
The
House of Commons was joined by the Senate in passing resolutions in
recent years, both calling for the IRGC to receive terrorist
designation. The United States, Sweden, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia list
the group as a terrorist entity. On Canada's list of terrorists, 73 in
number, the IRGC remains absent, although its al-Quds arm is on the
list.
Not
to be forgotten is the tragic loss of Iranian-Canadian lives when a
member of the IRGC shot down a Ukraine Airlines passenger jet, Flight
752 over Tehran just as it left the airport, on a flight from Tehran to
Kyiv, en route to Canada, believing it to be an incoming U.S. missile
although a missile would have been coming from a direction opposite to
the flight path. Iran denied for days that two missiles destroyed the
plane and all the lives within it, passengers and crew.
Protesters in Toronto organized by the Association of Families of Flight PS752 join others across Canada in solidarity with Iranians' continued protests against the regime. (Tyler Cheese/CBC) |
As
an arm of the Iranian military the IRGC is a major supporter of
terrorist groups including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia terrorist
militias, and Hamas. As a state sponsor of terrorism Iran is directly
responsible for the Hamas attack on October 7 slaughtering over 1,200
Israelis in southern Israel, taking 240 hostage, along with foreign farm
workers. The members of Congress emphasized in their letter that the
IRGC facilitated the attack and needed to be stopped.
Canada's
terrorist list dates from 2003. Any group on the list makes it illegal
in Canada for anyone to do business with the named group or to join or
participate in its actions. Which hasn't stopped 'pro-Palestinian' mobs
from hoisting Hamas flags alongside Palestinian flags and signalling
their support for the Hamas death-cult's heinous sadistic savagery in
raping Israeli girls and women, mutilating and murdering them, along
with men, the elderly and Israeli children and infants. Touting the
atrocities as being in a 'just cause' of 'freedom from the occupation'.
According
to an associate professor at University of Toronto, Thomas Juneau, it
would merely become a symbolic gesture to add the IRGC, achieving
little in the way of consequences. Yet there are times when even
symbolic gestures have their place when civilized societies have an
obligation to some kind of action, even symbolically, that they
unequivocally abhor and denounce such unspeakable atrocities. It would
even obligate the Canadian government to take the steps required to deny
entrance to members of the IRGC into Canada.
Iranian-Canadians
have complained for years to the federal government that elite members
of the IRGC seem to feel free to own property in Canada, and to visit
their families who live in Canada with no government authority denying
them that privilege. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made some
conciliatory overtures to the demands of Iranian Canadians that members
of the IRGC should be forbidden entry to Canada, yet a year later,
nothing has been done.
Labels: Canada, Islamic Republican Guard Corps, Terrorist List, United States
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