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Canada Must Fight Iranian Incitement to Genocide

(National Post-Canada) Irwin Cotler - Combating Iranian incitement is not a matter of a military intervention. Rather, it is a legal responsibility which Canada and Germany - as State Parties to the Genocide Convention - have an obligation to enforce. Indeed, as history has taught us only too well, the Holocaust - and the genocides that followed in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur - occurred not only because of the machinery of death, but because of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide. As the Supreme Court of Canada found, "The genocidal horrors of the Holocaust were made possible by the deliberate incitement of hatred against the Jewish people and other minorities." In particular, this genocidal incitement has intensified and escalated in 2012, with the website of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declaring that there is religious "justification to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and Iran must take the helm." Let there be no mistake about it - as the All-Party Report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Canadian Parliament found - "Iran has already committed the crime of incitement to genocide prohibited under the Genocide Convention." State Parties could file a complaint against Iran - which is also a State Party to the Convention - before the International Court of Justice; they could request that the Security Council refer the matter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who can indict Iranian leaders as it has others. The writer is the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University.
2012-08-15 00:00:00
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