Baha'i News: Australian MPs call upon Iran to protect human rights

[Baha’i World News Service - Subscribe <bwns-subscribe@bwc.org>]

Baha'i World News Service 
http://news.bahai.org
For further details, contact news@bahai.org


Australian MPs call upon Iran to protect human rights
http://news.bahai.org/story/887


CANBERRA, Australia, 14 February 2012, (BWNS) – In a motion supported by both 
government and opposition MPs in Australia's House of Representatives, 
Australian parliamentarians have urged their counterparts in Iran to promote 
and protect the fundamental human rights of Iranian citizens.

Iranian MPs are also called upon specifically to investigate the denial of 
access to higher education for student activists, Baha'is and others, and to 
seek a judicial review of the trials of the seven former Baha'i leaders, as 
well as human rights defenders and lawyers.

Read the motion and transcript of the debate here: 
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/reps/latesthansard/rhansard.pdf

Opening yesterday's debate, Melissa Parke – the MP for Fremantle – noted an 
increase in serious human rights violations in Iran since the subject was last 
debated in Australia's Federal Parliament on 15 November 2010.

"In 2011, Iran was cited repeatedly, including by the UN Secretary-General, the 
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the major international human rights 
NGOs for violating international human rights law," she said.

Ms. Parke noted eight areas – reported last September by Ban Ki-moon – in which 
the Iranian government is committing serious, systematic violations against the 
human rights of its own people, including the failure to protect freedom of 
religion.

"But the Iranian state has perhaps been most savage in its oppression of the 
Baha'is...In my experience, they are gentle and peace loving people, so it is 
difficult to understand the degree of hostility by the authorities in Iran 
towards them," said Ms. Parke.

Several of the Baha'i prisoners have family members who are Australian 
citizens, she added, "brother, sister, aunts, nephews and nieces – who wonder 
if they will ever see their loved ones again."

Welcoming the motion and debate, Australian Baha'i Community spokesperson 
Natalie Mobini said, "Our community has immediate relatives of some of those 
unjustly imprisoned and they will be heartened at this forthright motion from 
our nation's MPs." 

During the debate, the MP for Wills, Kelvin Thomson, noted a claim by an 
Iranian representative at the UN that the Baha'i organisation in Iran was 
political rather than religious, that it was illegal and that its organisation 
had been 'closed.'

"This quite blood-curdling response clearly displays a contempt for the basic 
concepts of freedom of speech and expression, including freedom of religious 
expression," Mr. Thomson said.

Kelly O'Dwyer, MP for Higgins said she stood together with somebody from the 
opposite side of the chamber in condemning Iran's human rights abuses.

"There must be no more serious and heinous act in this world than a government 
turning on its own people and committing violent atrocities on its own 
citizenry," said Ms. O'Dwyer.





To read the article online, view photograph and access links, go to:
http://news.bahai.org/story/887

________________________________________________

Copyright 2012 by the Baha'i World News Service. Stories and photographs 
produced by the Baha'i World News Service may be freely reprinted, re-emailed, 
re-posted to the World Wide Web and otherwise reproduced by any individual or 
organization as long as they are attributed to the Baha'i World News Service. 
For more information, go to http://news.bahai.org/terms-of-use/