On June 16th, Senator Roméo Dallaire delivered the following statement about the persecution of Baha’is in Iran to Canada’s Senate.
Senator Dallaire is a much honoured humanitarian and former Canadian General who was Force Commander of UNAMIR in Rwanda where he tried to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1993-94. That story is recounted in his book “Shake Hands with the Devil”, later used as the basis of a documentary by the same name that won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award in 2004. Among his current range of activities, Senator Dallaire is Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies.
TEXT OF STATEMENT:
Honourable senators, I rise to draw your attention to the extremely difficult situation confronting the Baha’i community of Iran. With roughly 300, 000 members, the Baha’i community is Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority.
Honourable senators may be aware that the Iranian government, ever suspicious of religious minorities, systematically persecutes leaders from the Baha’i community in violation of domestic and international laws. Seven members of the group that coordinated the social and spiritual affairs of the Baha’i community in Iran have been imprisoned for two years on trumped-up charges. Their trial took place this past Saturday… [See full statement]