{"id":30082,"date":"2014-10-31T01:24:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T17:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=30082"},"modified":"2014-10-31T01:24:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T17:24:55","slug":"united-nations-official-praises-canadas-stand-on-human-rights-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/31\/united-nations-official-praises-canadas-stand-on-human-rights-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"United Nations official praises Canada’s stand on human rights in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Foreign<\/a>
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird (center)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA — The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran says Canada’s tough stand on the issue gives strength to those inside the country.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Shaheed offered that assessment as Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird welcomed him to his Centre Block office on Parliament Hill on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n

“Canada’s leadership in this regard is highly appreciated,” Shaheed said.<\/p>\n

“A large number of Iran’s civil society also draws strength from the fact there are countries, leaders like Canada, who stand out and speak out against rights violations.”<\/p>\n

Baird praised Shaheed’s work and says the rights situation in Iran has deteriorated in the last year.<\/p>\n

The minister says that with the world preoccupied with the Iran’s nuclear ambitions it is also important to keep the focus on human rights.<\/p>\n

“But for Canada, we’ve taken the leadership role on (the) human rights side in Iran.”<\/p>\n

Baird said the election last year of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani hasn’t been a positive development, as some had hoped.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately the human rights situation has not only not improved, by any definition … it’s actually gotten worse.”<\/p>\n

Baird said that makes the UN rapporteur’s role “crucially important.”<\/p>\n

The minister said Canada is concerned by the number of executions in Iran, the persecution of gays and women and other crackdowns on dissent.<\/p>\n

The UN Human Rights Council will conduct its periodic review of Iran’s record in Geneva on Friday.<\/p>\n

Canada has taken one of the toughest stances of any country against Iran by closing its embassy in Tehran and kicking its diplomats out of Canada in 2012.<\/p>\n

Much of Canada’s criticism flows from the 2003 torture and murder of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in a Tehran prison.<\/p>\n

Kazemi, a Canadian citizen who was born in Iran, was arrested while photographing a demonstration outside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.<\/p>\n

She was thrown in jail, where she was tortured and raped before dying in hospital weeks later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA — The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran says Canada’s tough stand on the issue gives …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":30159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","mauthors-mike-blanchfield","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}